ABSTRACT
On October 27, 2016, I sat in my office and watched as unarmed Water Protectors were beaten, tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, arrested, and brutalized by police officers outfitted for war. I refreshed the choppy livestreams, sounds of the blaring LRAD coming out of my desktop speakers. I sat there in my office chair thousands of miles away for over five hours, seeing friends on the front lines appear in moments of smoky chaos, truly believing that I was going to watch someone die. The next few days, I slept horribly, uncomfortable in the knowledge that a place I had been less than a month before and friends I had just seen were being put through such brutality, and sitting with the fear of what would come next.
