Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline

LaVonne Ellis’s participation in the Standing Rock protests was a two-week intervention in the campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The book records her joining the protesters and, afterward, returning to Ehrenberg, placing the action within the unsettled, mobile life she continued to build in the desert.

Participation at Standing Rock

LaVonne spent two weeks at Standing Rock, where she joined protesters fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. The account establishes her presence and participation, but does not detail particular demonstrations, confrontations, or the specific work she undertook there.

Return to Ehrenberg

After the protest stint, LaVonne returned to Ehrenberg. In the quiet of the desert, she worked through writer’s block to complete and publish a short memoir of her childhood, while imagining a future home base near Taos between van trips. The narrative thus places her political participation alongside the continuing effort to shape a life through writing and mobile dwelling; it gives no further account of the protest’s outcome or of how it changed her plans.