Making cough syrup, building houses: Standing Rock students learn through community engagement

This was an average school day for Kyle, who attends Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe, the Defenders of the Water School — a culturally centered, project-based school for junior high and high school students. It began in August 2016 at the #NoDAPL prayer camps in Cannon Ball, North Dakota.

Kyle said he doesn’t learn well from sitting in a classroom and listening to a teacher lecture. He prefers the hands-on approach at the Defenders of the Water school, where his mother, Memorie White Mountain, is the executive director and his father, Hoksila White Mountain, is the social worker.

He and his classmates choose the projects they want to work on together and then carry them out in the community. Through those projects, their instructors teach math, history, language and science. For example, while foraging, Kyle learned math by taking stock of his class’s harvest and language by identifying each item in English and Lakota.

This is what Hoksila White Mountain calls “a free learning environment.” A citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and descendant of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, he said students learn what they want at their own pace while earning class credits — and, going beyond standard public school requirements, they learn about Indigenous culture and history.

“That way,” he said, “the Native teachings continue to live on.”

Students put that Indigenous knowledge to use through their school projects, learning from and teaching their community. Educator Kimimila Locke, an enrolled member of the Ahtna Dené Nation of Tazlina, Alaska, and Standing Rock descendant, has been watching those students connect with their Native culture since the school grew out of the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance.

A Native-led, community-based education

At its height in September 2016, the #NoDAPL camps hosted thousands of people from more than 200 tribes, and many kids came to Cannon Ball with their families. They stayed at the prayer camp away from the front lines of the protest. Locke, a teacher who shuttled supplies to the #NoDAPL camp every weekend from Denver, said a school was first suggested by a group of aunties who wanted to keep the kids at camp safe.

After the first skirmishes with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, parents and relatives were worried authorities might pursue legal actions to return the kids to school, taking them away from their families. Moving their school to camp solved that problem, said Locke, and also kept the kids together in a central location should there be violent conflicts with law enforcement.

Alayna Eagle Shield led the charge to start the school for kids aged 6 to 12, with the help of Locke and five teachers — Blaze Starkey, Jose Zhagney, Steve Tamayo, Savannah Begay and Teresa Dzieglewicz.

They quickly decided the school would not run like a regular public school. First, it would run year-round. Second, there were too many learning opportunities happening at the camp, like buffalo butcherings, clay pot making, drum circles and pick-up lacrosse games, to keep the kids inside reading textbooks and doing worksheets. Plus, during the summer, they had 40 to 50 students to teach. With that many kids, they would sometimes need community members to step in and take a group to help in the kitchen or tell stories around the fire. So, Locke said, they ditched the traditional classroom to connect students with the land and their culture.

“I think it speaks to the shift that happened in people and community. Because I feel like before, there was always this feeling of ‘we need to ask permission,’” she said.

But at the #NoDAPL camp, tribal communities were coming together of their own volition to protect their sacred water. The school’s literacy teacher, Teresa Dzieglewicz, said her students took ownership of their education and “saw themselves as leaders at the camp.” They planned their itinerary and budget when they took a trip to Bear Buttes and gave speeches to the camp at the community fire — one student even spoke with actor Mark Ruffalo, she said. And every day, the students would go to the river and pray. The union of action and Native pride is what Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe was born out of.

“The way our kids are learning, they’re seeking it,” said Locke. “They know how to do it all, and they don’t ask permission.”

Dzieglewicz recounted the day in October 2016 when law enforcement raided the #NoDAPL treaty camp, a resistance camp that stood directly in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and arrested 142 people.

“It was a day of a lot of police violence, a lot of tension,” she said, describing the camp as a scary ghost town.

It was not a day to read “The Birchbark House” or practice math with beadwork, so the students chose to drum and sing around the sacred fire. Soon, those who were at the camp, including many of the elders, gathered around the fire, coming together in community.

“You could just feel the energy really change,” said Dzieglewicz. “It was such a youth led movement. Even the younger kids were really important to the kind of fabric that tied everyone together at the camp.”

She said that day speaks to how important community is to the Defenders of the Water students.

“I think the kids felt really connected there. The kids felt really loved,” she said, noting that some students had never felt like Native culture was valued at their hometown schools. “This is what learning can be, you know. Learning can be rooted in community, culture and land.”

Students and political activism

After law enforcement dissolved the camp in December 2016, the school shut down. But that fire for education sovereignty kept burning, said Locke, so some of the original instructors, including her and Alayna Eagle Shield, applied for a grant to reopen the school, which they finally made happen in the fall of 2021.

Since then, the Defenders of the Water students have been learning Indigenous knowledge through helping their Standing Rock communities and advocating across the country for Native and water rights.

In June 2024, they took their advocacy to Washington, D.C., to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. Oil still flows through the 1,172 mile pipeline, which crosses the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Reservation, and the tribe is still fighting to shut it down. The students, joined by another group from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Indigenous Environmental Network, protested in front of the White House and spoke to members of Congress on behalf of their tribes and their sacred water.

In her capacity as executive director and teacher, Memorie White Mountain chaperoned the group of about 20 students and marched with them around the Capitol grounds, chanting, “You can’t drink oil! Keep it in the soil!”

A citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, she said the students came up with the idea to go to the Capitol and prepared by attending non-violent protest training and writing speeches.

“They’re really amazing. If they want to do something, they will work for it, and they will fight for their beliefs,” she said. “They are advocates for the water. That’s where we originated from.”

Making an impact on the community

The White Mountains got involved with the school in 2018 before it officially reopened three years later. Memorie White Mountain, who dropped out of high school, said she only got excited about learning when she picked up a trade. She earned her teaching degree around the same time she joined the school to teach Native kids in a way she would have connected with as a youth.

“We’re used to using our hands and living off the land to learn,” she said. “If you allow them to take control of their education, they’re more likely to be involved in their learning.”

Currently, the students are building a tiny house in their community as a temporary housing unit for young adults in partnership with Iyuha Acu Youth Services Center. Last year, the students came up with a budget, designed the house, drew up the blueprints and started construction. The framing and roofing for the tiny house are complete. Their next steps, with assistance from the Avalon School, a project-based school in Minnesota, and a few local contractors, are to install plumbing, electrical wiring and insulation.

Kyle said his favorite part of the build was using a drill to screw the wooden framing together. He said they expect to finish the house in October.

The Defenders of the Water students also advocated to change the name of their town to Bear Soldier. It is currently named McLaughlin, after Major James McLaughlin, who ordered the arrest of Chief Sitting Bull in December 1890, which led to the chief’s death. Memorie White Mountain said their signed proposal made it through the tribal council but was tabled at the city level.

The students also have been reviving Native traditions over the last five years. Every year, they hold coming-of-age ceremonies for their classmates, and in 2021, they built two Hidatsa earthlodges on the school’s 40-acre property.

Memorie White Mountain said the school is currently looking to open its classes to younger students after parents expressed interest in having younger children attend. On top of that, Locke said they have a waitlist of 30 junior high and high school kids who want to attend, which would quadruple their numbers, but they need more funding before they can open up enrollment.

Locke, an educator for around 20 years in seven different states, said she’d like to see more project-based schools where students can take charge of their education.

“It does take people who are willing to put aside their ego and really listen to students,” she said. “A personal wish I have is that we could create this everywhere.”