LaDonna Brave Bull Allard (June 8, 1956 – April 10, 2021), known as Tamakawastewin ("Good Earth Woman"),[1] was a Native American Dakota and Lakota historian, genealogist, and a matriarch of the water protector movement.

[13][14] She was also a descendant of Oyate Tawa, one of the 38 Dakota people hung in the largest mass execution in US history in Mankato, Minnesota, and of Nape Hote Win (Mary Big Moccasin), a survivor of the Whitestone Massacre.

[21] She also helped oversee improvements to Sitting Bull's Fort Yates grave site after the land was repatriated to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in 2007.

[5][25] These protests sought to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline because it crossed lands protected by the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), threatened historic sacred sites, and ran beneath the Lake Oahe reservoir, the drinking water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

During the construction of the pipeline, workers bulldozed burial grounds and other archeological sites identified by Brave Bull Allard and others working with the Standing Rock Tribal Historic Preservation Office.

[29] The movement at Standing Rock brought thousands of people together to form the largest intertribal alliance on the American continent in centuries, with more than 200 tribal nations represented.

[30][31][32][33] After years of resistance and protest, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Indigenous organizers scored a legal victory on June 6, 2020, when a federal judge ordered pipeline owner consortium Dakota Access LLC, controlled by Energy Transfer Partners (founder and CEO Kelcy Warren), to stop operations and empty its pipelines of all oil pending an environmental review that could take a year.