Petaluma builder Miguel Elliott at Standing Rock & in the paper

Our own Miguel Elliott is in Standing Rock, building. The following is from Petaluma’s Argus-Courier, which I found on today’s PD website. Be sure to see the photos at the bottom.

https://www.petaluma360.com/news/641...ost&artslide=0

Petaluma builder adds structures to Standing Rock site
ERIC GNECKOW, ARGUS-COURIER STAFF | December 19, 2016

Petaluma native Miguel Elliott said he wasn’t sure exactly what he would uncover as he helped dig through the frozen North Dakota ground last month, advancing gradually through the icy surface to reveal, inch by labored inch, the softer earth beneath.

The stakes were high — as a long-time builder of earthen structures, Elliott was on hand at Sacred Stone camp near the proposed site of the Dakota Access Pipeline to offer his skills to shore up the area for an increasingly harsh winter. His constructions would be a bulwark against the cold, he said, and an affordable way to expand a camp that some hoped would become a permanent village.

It all hinged on what emerged from that frigid hole, and it turned out the earth piling up was unlike any he had worked with before, he said.

“It was a ready mix – we just added water,” Elliott said during a call from the snowy Standing Rock Sioux reservation last week. “We didn’t have to soak the clay. We didn’t have to add any sand to it. It was just ready to go.”

Using an ancient earth-and-straw building material known as cob, Petaluma’s Elliott is using his skills to help construction of warm and weather-proof structures on the North Dakota prairie.

His first project is an 800-square-foot school, which Elliott said was under construction in perhaps the coldest conditions in memory for cob-style building. Yet the project has been popular, he said, being “definitely the warmest place in camp.”

As the schoolhouse and other structures rise from the earth at Sacred Stone, Elliott said the camp could serve as something of a case study in cob, a construction material he champions that nonetheless generally hits a roadblock for larger structures due to modern building codes.

“It’s a really great opportunity here because, being on a reservation, no building codes are required. We can build houses, schools, community centers — build a whole village out — without having to go through the lengthy permitting process,” he said. “It really could be an amazing opportunity to demonstrate some good, energy-efficient, ecologically sound, permaculture principles.”

Elliott said he left for the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on Nov. 20, following reports of a need for structures that could house individuals who are remaining in the area through the winter to resist construction of the pipeline that would transport crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. It was there that he met up with other builders, and joined the schoolhouse project already underway.

Meant to replace a small tent serving as a makeshift schoolhouse for around 10 children, the building began as a straw-bale frame with a roof. Elliott said he led the work to plaster the structure with cob, after mixing the material with bare feet in frigid conditions.

The structure now features a wood-fired heater that runs under a cob bench, which warms the interior while helping to dry the plaster. Scaffolding used in construction has been converted to bunk beds, and the building can sleep 16 people.

“It’s pretty neat, sitting on a nice warm bench in the middle of a blizzard,” he said, on a day when temperatures hit a high of nine degrees Fahrenheit.

Continues here (with more pictures)