Mni Wiconi | Wade in the Waters

Uati
14 min readNov 16, 2016

I just returned from Standing Rock, and today Donald Trump was elected president. I’d like to share my thoughts. But I am still utterly exhausted from a 16+ hour road trip/ bus ride. On the bright side I had my first shower in a week and washed my hair. But there is still some mud underneath my big toenails from walking into the Cannonball River barefoot one sunset…

To say this is like night and day, to say I have mixed feelings… is an understatement. After all of my travels around the world, Standing Rock and the Rosebud Camp on the Lakota Sioux reservation is by far the best place I’ve ever been. Going there, at the very last minute, with strangers, to a conflicted area under police surveillance, at the brink of a North Dakota winter, with no tent of my own (nor even a coat!), to camp, on my own, at seven months pregnant is up to now the best decision of my life (stay tuned for my next big plans…).

Two days ago 400 Native youth and their allies march in silent prayer up to the front lines of where Energy Transfer Partner’s “Dakota Access Pipeline” is being built through sacred burial ground of the…

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Uati

making stories visual + leading outside yoga + telling art narratives patreon.com/whitneysparks