A member of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is planning to bring supplies to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota next week.

Kagen Holland

Kagen Holland, who with his mother led a several-hundred-mile pilgrimage to all  California missions in protest of Father Junipero Serra’s canonization last year, will be making the drive from Santa Clarita to the Standing Rock Sioux camp where tribal members have been fighting to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Thousands of Native Americans from across the country have converged on the camp to lend their voices to the struggle to protect the tribe’s water supply – the Missouri River – which the oil pipeline would traverse.

A week ago, the pipeline construction company dragged scrapers over a swath of land where Standing Rock elders had identified burial and other sacred sites.

On Friday a federal court ruled against the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s petition for a temporary injunction, but later that same afternoon the U.S. Departments of Justice, Interior and the Army (for the Army Corps of Engineers) ordered a halt to construction and called for new legislation to consider tribal interests in the federal approval process.

As many other tribes have been doing, the local Fernandeno-Tataviam are collecting supplies for the camp. Of particular need are four-season tents, tent stakes, ropes, blankets, sleeping bags, socks, coats, gloves and hats, tarps and chairs.

Donations can be made through the local tribe, which can be reached through its website, http://www.tataviam-nsn.us, or by calling 818-837-0794.