More Horse Footage at End (UPDATE)
On a beautiful sunny day in June, 2014 President Barack Obama came to the banks of the Cannonball River on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. June is the month of the Strawberry Moon and celebrates the first harvest of wild fruit. The occasion was Cannonball Flag day and Native Americans from Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservations turned out to welcome the President. For one day the hills and buttes and prairies of North and South Dakota were the center of rare media attention, and the people who welcomed the President into their homes and hearts were ecstatic. Michelle Obama was with him, babies were thrust into their arms for photo ops, children danced, and a powwow sealed good will and belief in the promises Obama made to the Sioux nation.
The Washington Postreported that stories of Native children made the president cry in the oval office.
"I love these young people," Obama said shortly after meeting them. "I only spent an hour with them. They feel like my own."
It is a little over two years later and these people whom the president claimed as his own are being arrested on minor charges by a seemingly omnipotent Sheriff in Morton County. They are herded into dog kennels at Fort Rice and the insides of their arms are marked with a number in black ink. Women suffer broken bones from batons wielded by police officers and deputies. Memories of others wearing brown shirts in 1939 Germany, who also marked people with black ink, cause fear and apprehension.
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