"The plan seemed simple enough: go to the National Park office, pull a permit and be back at the park in two hours.

With this in mind, I set out with two friends to find the office in Washington, DC in August of the past year. The permit was for a group gathering prior to the Keystone XL civil disobedience. Being a modern day NDN, I used my phone to pinpoint the address and we boarded the subway at noon. We were leading a group training in five hours so two hours would be plenty of time.

We took the subway as far as we could and then set out on foot for a mile long walk through the enormous expanse of land surrounding the Washington Monument. As we got closer to the mapped address, none of us could see a building. Despite this, we continued to the exact location and stood in an empty space next to the river. I looked at the time and it had taken us over an hour to get to the wrong place.

Backtracking, we stopped passing strangers, some of whom told us to go back the way we came and others suggesting we keep going in the same direction. By this time a couple of hours had passed since we started out."

Get the Story:
Robert Chanate: A Pedicab, an Ally and Martin Luther King Jr. (Indian Country Today 1/23)

Related Stories:
Robert Chanate: Native escape from confusing sweat lodge (1/12)
Robert Chanate: Taking action against the Keystone XL Pipeline (1/4)