NoDAPL at ten years: How the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline helps explain much of the chaotic protests we see today.
We're approaching the ten-year anniversary of a pipeline protest that was the harbinger of what we see today.
For the world, it started quietly on April 1, 2016 when a small camp was set up along the Missouri River.
For me, it started with a spreadsheet.
The protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline was hitting the local news, and while it started small with Standing Rock members mainly, no outsiders, it caught my attention. Initially, I was favorable to their cause, based on what I was reading in the local news.
But the way the news was being reported began to confuse me.
It seemed as if facts were being reported out of order, and were more emotional than factual. When it became clear that the timeline of events mattered for understanding, I decided to build a spreadsheet timeline, plug in what I could find, and sort it to better understand. That spreadsheet still exists, though Google doesn’t seem to like it being shared.1
I began paying closer attention in order to add to my spreadsheet, and that is how I ended up, over almost two years, gathering 40K+ pieces of information (social posts, photos, PDF files, news articles, videos, etc.) of the protest. Because I had gathered so much information in real time, connected with people who, like me, were now very much against the protest when we realized the full context and were horrified at what it had become, it seemed logical to write a book.
No one else was going to tell the rest of the story, the one that didn’t make it into the media or have the celebrities fawning over the protesters.
So I wrote a book. 446 pages. Tiny print to get it all in there. Photos, maps, essays, timelines, and interviews.
Blue Like A River: Burning the bridge between red and white at Standing Rock came out within about eight months of the protest’s end, in the fall of 2017, and was sold mostly locally, particularly among law enforcement families, ranchers, and business owners who had been impacted by the protest. I didn’t sell a lot of books, but I know that the people who eagerly requested a copy wanted it for more reasons than just owning a book; many told me they just wanted someone, anyone, to tell their story since the media had not.
A lot has happened in ten years. Some of the players have died. Some have “switched sides.” Some of the websites that published the information and news of the protest no longer exist.
But what hasn’t changed is what I learned about activism and how the media frames protests, how it frames a simplistic version of who the good guy and bad guy are, and how we keep getting duped today. That decade-old book is as relevant now as it was then, and because of that, I decided to release it serially here on Substack in the coming year. You’ll see techniques that have be common among activists today. You’ll see the names of players, including politicians and celebrities, who were active or present with the protest (two of whom are now in the Trump administration), and you’ll realize that every time activism and protests hit the news, it’s in a twisted way that people keep falling for again and again.
Here’s how the release of the book will work:
Access to the book content will be available only to paid subscribers. The book itself is no longer in print since the cost of printing it has gone up so much that it is now over $55. The cost of an annual paid subscription to this Substack is only $50, and you get tons of stuff to read. I think it’s a pretty good deal and fair.
The book content will not be sent via email. This is a very specific topic, not the general interest my usual blog covers. So, while it will be published on my Substack, I won’t force it into your inbox. I’m not going to assume you’re interested. You can find it at julieneidlinger.com (this Substack) or on the Substack app.2
The content will be published serially. I will publish the content regularly until I get through the book.
That’s it.
If you have a paid subscription, you can read it as much as you want. And I think you’ll find it interesting. In fact, I will probably find it interesting because the honest truth is, once I finished the book, I shelved and filed everything and didn’t think about it anymore. It was a difficult time, and I was happy to forget. I don’t even remember everything I wrote.
Regarding the spreadsheet, I actually had to copyright it because someone plagiarized my notes and the quotes from the news sources, but that’s another story, one that I tell in one of the essays in the book.
My Substack blog is undergoing some subtle changes starting in 2026. You won’t really notice unless you’re on the browser version, but it’s shifting from “Lone Prairie Blog” to “Lone Prairie Magazine,” and I’m thinking of it more in terms of a digital magazine than blog. It has new sections accordingly. Read more here.