For artist Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), the Mirror Shield Project began out of urgency when in the summer of 2016 he learned that the water of his father’s homelands, where he grew up on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation was under threat. The Dakota Access Pipeline, A $3.87 billion underground petroleum transport pipeline which connects fracking grounds of the Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota (Fort Berthold Reservation of the MHA Nation, where Luger is an enrolled member), through 4 states and to refineries in Illinois, was to cross the Missouri River just upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation. The pipeline was originally planned to cross the Missouri River, north of Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital, but the city protested for fear that it would contaminate their water supply. The pipeline was rerouted down river and just upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation. In addition to the threat to the water, this new path of the DAPL was to desecrate several marked ancestral burial sites of both the Mandan and Lakota peoples. Over the course of nearly a year, an estimated 15,000 people from around the world traveled to the Water Protector camp areas just outside of Cannonball, ND to stand in solidarity with the protection of the water and in support of the Indigenous led actions in opposition of the DAPL. 

As an artist, Luger knew he had access and privilege to a much larger global community to affect change and generate the support his homelands needed. By using art as a measure of action and creating an open source format call for participation with an instructional video, How To Build Mirror Shields For Water Protectors, filmed and edited by Razelle Benally at the Institute of American Indian Arts during his Artist In Residence program in November, 2016, Luger launched The Mirror Shield Project. This call to participate inspired people from across the Nation to create and transport what has been estimated at over a thousand mirrored shields to the Oceti Sakowin Camp near Standing Rock, ND. Once onsite, these shields were available for use by the Water Protectors in frontline actions as they stood up against the police and the DAPL. 

Throughout 2016, with the support of his family, Luger continued supply runs to the camps, engaging in and supporting the Water Protectors actions, including making mirrored shields at Oceti Sakowin Camp with various onsite arts and activist organizations who used the shields among many other forms of art generated for the Water Protectors peaceful direct frontline actions. One such impactful moment when the mirrored shields were engaged and which has since been shared globally as an act of inspiration for art as peaceful resistance, was during a collaborative performance action created with Rory Erler Wakemup, an Indigenous artist and friend of Luger’s. Inspired by the Water Protectors continued actions and Luger’s Mirror Shield Project, Wakemup and his community in Minneapolis created hundreds of mirrored shields with support Wakemup gained from Forecast Public Art and other local Minneapolis organizations. Wakemup brought Luger out to host a mirror shield making workshop at All My Relations Arts, MI and then together they drove these mirrored shields to Oceti Sakowin camp for use. In addition to aiding in frontline actions, these mirrored shields were used for the Water Serpent Action (2016), which invited hundreds of Water Protectors to engage in a site specific performance, walking the entire Oceti Sakown camp site while holding the reflective shields overhead, creating a moving river or serpent-like formation, documented from above via drone by Wakemup. This action was intended for the police surveillance planes constantly flying overhead, so they could witness the Water Protectors resilience and have their own toxic practices of surveillance upon those at the Oceti Sakowin camp reflected back. In addition to this performance, many other actions were facilitated and organized by anonymous communities onsite which deployed the mirrored shields, including in December, 2016 where over 1,000 U.S. Veterans traveled from across the Nation to the camps and engaged in several direct actions where they held mirrored shields and other DIY protection shields up to the police and held the frontline in protection of the Water Protectors who were facing rubber bullets and water cannon assaults.