American Police State, Oceti Sakowin Camp of Prayer and Ceremony

When North Dakota's Morton Country Sheriff's Department attempted to cut off the delivery of food, water, and propane to the people living in the Sioux camp during a brutal winter people rushed from around the US to attempt to help. They were met by a scene that seemed torn from a dystopian film about the future in which the power of nation states is eventually overrun by stateless superpowers--primarily rogue corporations that manipulate governments to turn against their own citizens.

Smoke Smeared Moon

A full moon rises above the Oceti Sakowin Camp of Prayer and Ceremony just outside the boundaries of the Standing Rock Reservation in the US state of North Dakota. Residents of the camp were gathered to observe ceremonies devoted to praying for the Missouri Watershed which was being put at risk by a recklessly considered and arguably illegal project designed to benefit investors in the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the environment and personal liberty.

Turtle Island Under Siege

Turtle Island, a sacred site belonging to the Standing Rock Sioux, was seized to force a private oil pipeline across the Missouri River directly through land granted to the Sioux by treaty and just down river from a site where almost 400 members the the Standing Rock Tribe were massacred by the US Army in the 19th century during a harvest festival. A group of American military veterans mustered themselves to assist the Sioux including the group camped at the base of the bluff pictured here.

Tipi Under Klieg Lights

The tax-layer funded paramilitary police force supported by both North Dakota and the federal government even under Obama employed many tactics of psychological warfare in addition to potentially lethal acts of brutality. An almost two mile long bank of klieg lights were trained upon the residents of the Oceti Sacowin Camp to disrupt the welfare of the residents praying for the Missouri watershed at the very site where the pipeline was to cross the Missouri River.

Premodern Village Site

Caribou migration trails wend round tent house foundations in the Western Arctic National Parklands. Fireweed, the signature flower of disturbed earth, grows from pits dug into the ground in the late 14th earth 15th century.

Before the Holocene

This network of lakes and rivers is in the most remote location in the mainland US, and though it is more than 200 kilometers away from a road or trail or village it has served as the summer gathering place for the earliest know arctic dwellers who hunted and fished here for at least the last 14,000 years.

Postmodern Village Site

The pile of antlers and skulls on the roof of this hunter's house are the only objects visible in this photograph that didn't have to be shipped in many thousands of kilometers by barge or by cargo plane.

Ash and Rain

The ash of a tundra fire collides with a fierce autumn rain. Northwest Arctic National Parklands.

Bird Man

Bird Man
- By Tama Baldwin

Jumble Ice, Chukchi Sea

Jumble Ice, Chukchi Sea
- By Tama Baldwin

Intragalactic

Intragalactic
- By Tama Baldwin

Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet
- By Tama Baldwin