Standing on the Great Plains of North Dakota feels like straddling two oceans. The one beneath your feet is made of endless, rolling prairie. The other, above you, is clouds. When it rains, there are no trees to shield one world from the other. Prairie rain opens up the sky. It first falls as hard little droplets and then big, unyielding sobs.
It’s raining the morning I try to find activist Lee Ann Eastman. Most people have abandoned the area around the main cook campfire to seek shelter from the dark clouds gathering overhead. And they’re right to do so; in a matter of minutes, the water pounding the earth picks up into a deafening storm and turns the campground into mud.
I don’t wait in the rain for long. A tribal councilman calls Lee Ann’s name over the camp microphone, and a smiling young woman in a purple poncho comes running toward me from the parking lot. She motions for me to follow her, and together we dart toward her Yukon truck.
