Evanston Artist Hand Delivers Donations to Standing Rock Protesters

EVANSTON, IL - An Evanston artist recently returned home from a trip to North Dakota, where he presented donations to protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline who have been camped out at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation for days.

Don Pollack, an Evanstonian who is an adjunct associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, partnered with Joe Podlasek, the Native director at Schaumburg’s Trickster Gallery of Indian Art, to gather donations and hand-deliver them in North Dakota.

“We presented the supplies to members of the Standing Rock tribal council at the tribal headquarters to distribute to people in need on the Reservation,” said Pollack, who made the drive to North Dakota with his daughter, Julia. “The camp is getting pretty overwhelmed as they will be moving it back on higher ground as it is currently on the Spring flood plane.”

The three found that a significant number of activists remain on site despite an Army Corps of Engineers announcement that construction on the pipeline that’s planned to travel through the reservation’s river has been stalled.

“After we dropped items off, we went to the camp to see what was needed and the head physician relayed,- cash donations to help with the facility. On the camp website wishlist were tights and batteries,” Pollack added.

The concern over the project has not ebbed, however, and Pollack made note of some of the needs of the protesters that remain.

“Merino wool tights and batteries are in especially high demand,” Pollack noted in an F newsmagazine feature on his trip. The Mni Wiconi Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council are also in need of cash donations.

Pollack shared one of the aspects of the proposed pipeline that bothers him the most. It’s that it was originally set to run near the urban town of Bismarck, North Dakota but moved because it was too close to the city.

“We build infrastructure and give companies a break, because we all benefit from the building of railroads and phone lines and pipelines,” Pollack said. “We all put up with it because we inadvertently end up benefiting from it. Historically, the native reservations have just always paid the price and received little benefit and diminished land for their acquiescence.”

Another Evanston resident, Mark Cleveland, helped raise funds for the medical tent Pollack said.

Read more via F newsmagazine

Photo submitted by Don Pollack