We also visited the National Museum of the American Indian, a relatively new Smithsonian museum that I had visited after it first opened. I remember not liking it much then, and still am not enamored with it, although some of the displays are interesting.

In summer 2016, more than 6,000 people, including Native Americans from across the Great Plains and other tribal nations in North America as well as supporters from countries around the world, created a small city in a flood plain of the Missouri River to battle the Dakota Access pipeline, or the Black Snake, to be built by Energy Transfer Partners, which would threaten sacred sites and contaminate the Missouri, the water supply for the Standing Rock tribe and 17 million other Americans.

The protests came after the pipeline was routed through the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s indigenous ancestral lands—without the approval of the people—even though the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had already rejected the pipeline’s original route for fear that an oil spill could contaminate the drinking water in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Thousands of protesters flocked to the site to stand with the Sioux, setting up camps in the process. After police shut down a man named Edwards' camp in 2017, he donated this mile-marker to the Smithsonian.

Elwood, the World’s Tallest Concrete Gnome, Iowa, posted earlier: