More than a fundraiser, it was a summoning of supernatural defense: Big Eagle says the tattoo sent a prayer, a flesh offering, to the Thunderbirds, powerful spirit-beings who rule the sky and control storms. That’s why she launched the tattoo campaign. “These forces that we’re standing up against, I wonder sometimes how human they really are.” “Peaceful, prayerful people getting attacked,” Big Eagle says. In efforts to dismantle the camps, law enforcement and mercenary agents resorted to pepper spray, rubber bullets, attack dogs, arrests, and undercover spies. For nearly 10 months, these peaceful protestors maintained camps to block construction of the 1,172-mile oil pipeline that would burrow under four states and the Missouri River, threatening Indigenous land and water. The campaign raised more than $153,000 to support the No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) movement and its water protectors.
Tattoo artists around the globe offered the image and donated a portion of each sale to a GoFundMe launched by Big Eagle and Elle Festin, an international organizer for traditional Filipino tattooists. Within weeks, the design decorated the flesh of thousands of people from Arkansas to New Zealand. The bird-being hovered above zigzags and dots, representing the river of life and seven bands of the Great Sioux Nation. “My heart was just poured into it,” she recalls.Ī tattooist and descendant of Dakota and Lakota Sioux, Big Eagle rendered an eagle-like figure, with tail feathers morphed into a tipi. In late 2016, after joining protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Stephanie Big Eagle designed a tattoo to help the fight.
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