A firsthand account of two colonial pipelines and their resistance: the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and the Line 3 pipeline on Anishinaabe lands. This is a story of becoming and un-becoming. When the living waters that crisscrossed the Standing Rock reservation came under threat, minister of the nearby Unitarian Universalist congregation Karen Van Fossan asked herself what it means, as a descendent of colonialism, to resist her own colonial culture. When another pipeline, Line 3, came to threaten Anishinaabe ways of life, the question became even more resounding. In A Fire at the Center , Van Fossan takes readers behind the scenes of the Dakota Access Pipeline conflict, to penitentiaries where prisoners of war have carried the movement onward, to the jail cell where she was held for protesting Line 3, to a reimagining of decolonized family constellations, and to moments of collective hope and strength. With penetrating insight, she blends memoir, history, and cultural critique. Guided by the generous teachings of Oceti Sakowin Camp near Standing Rock, she investigates layers of colonialism—extractive industries, mass incarceration, broken treaties, disappearances of Indigenous people—and the boundaries of imperial whiteness. For all those striving for liberation and meaningful allyship, Van Fossan’s learnings and practices of genuine, mutual solidarity and her thoughtful critique of whiteness will be transformational. Karen Van Fossan is an abolitionist, ordained minister, licensed professional counselor, and former defendant in the Line 3 pipeline resistance. As director of Authentic Ministry, she serves as a street chaplain committed to relational spirituality and restorative justice. She has studied at Naropa University, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, and Pacific School of Religion. Matriarch to a rambunctious chosen family, she lives in Fargo, North Dakota, on the traditional lands of Anishinaabe, Lakota/Dakota, and many Indigenous peoples. Welcome Is it about Standing Rock? I have been asked this question when a loved one or colleague hears about this book and generously wonders what it’s about. Each time, the answer gets caught in my throat. In this moment, the words seem to be caught in my throat again. The truest answer might go like this: Not exactly. And also yes . Standing Rock showed me how to live. At Oceti Sakowin Camp, the largest Camp within the Standing Rock movement, I was welcomed as a relative, one of a hundred thousand relatives who had gathered there from everywhere. In 2016, when the Indigenous-led uprising to protect the Missouri River roused the human family, it became my fondest wish to live as a good relative with people and all beings who comprise the Earth. When the colonial state forcibly closed the camps in collusion with the colonial extractive industry, thousands of people, including myself, lost their sense of home. Many within our community lost their home altogether. This book was born from that loss and longing, and also from an ever-deepening gratitude toward Oceti Sakowin Camp and the world I inhabited there. As far as I can tell, the way of life at Camp was a way of life that human beings were made for. I certainly felt more like a human being, an embodied member of the intricate web of life, than I ever had before. Speaking of before — Way back before my ancestors crossed the Atlantic Ocean, hungry for nourishment of many kinds, most of them lived in the Celtic Sea and North Sea regions of the world, landmasses that are now called the British Isles, northern Europe, and, as my mom and I were stunned to learn through DNA testing, the Baltic Sea region. Guided by the Water Protector movement, I have begun to understand my heritage, as well as my own life’s story, not only in terms of culture and land but also in terms of water. Maybe this long-ago sea connection, this abiding presence of water in my own ancestral homelands, has remained within my bones. From my earliest years, I have always rushed to the rivers— The Kankakee River of my childhood. The Missouri River of much of my adulthood. The Red River of today. As a child and grandchild of ministers, I grew up with epic stories about the watery beginnings of creation, the presence of God— or Goddess, or Great Mystery, or Spirit of Life, or Manifestation of Love—dwelling in all peoples, places, and creatures. This heritage has nourished me with an abiding sense of Spirit. At the same time, I also descend from the very white settler colonialism that has sought to destroy both the Indigenous-led Water Protector movement and, for more than five hundred years, Indigenous peoples as a whole. Though it’s painful to acknowledge, the same culture and system that raised and formed me has also enacted unthinkable acts of violence as a way of life. In this dissonant context, it seems this system of violence must have something to do with who we white people are, as well as who I am as a white p