The #NoDAPL encampments at Standing Rock — the largest Indigenous gathering in a century — were met with a militarized response run jointly by the state, National Guard, and the pipeline company's TigerSwan mercenaries: water cannon in freezing temperatures, dog attacks, and more than 800 criminal cases against water protectors, coordinated through a private-public fusion apparatus later exposed in leaked documents.

Red Fawn Fallis, whose boyfriend proved to be a paid FBI informant who owned the gun in her case, served years in federal prison as the prosecutions' central political prisoner; Michael "Little Feather" Giron and Michael "Rattler" Markus took federal civil-disorder pleas. The mass-defense project that fought the 800 cases — winning dismissal or acquittal in the great majority — carried the fish-in and Wounded Knee legal traditions into the pipeline era, from Standing Rock to Line 3 and Mauna Kea.