Guerrilla Gopros

Unicorn Riot’s underground video insurrection.

- Wes Enzinna

ON A NOVEMBER morning at the height of the  Standing Rock standoff, scores of anti-pipeline protesters stripped off their parkas and dog-paddled across the Cantapeta Creek, an icy ribbon of water that wends into the Missouri River. Their goal was to reach sacred Sioux burial grounds on the creek’s far side before the cops and security guards could evict or arrest them.

As police assembled on the opposite bank, fingering rifles and tear-gas canisters, Lorenzo Serna, a co-founder of the media collective Unicorn Riot, leaped into the water. Serna wore black shorts and a helmet with a GoPro Hero4 camera mounted on it. The scene Serna captured was emblematic of the confrontation in North Dakota: When the protesters had nearly reached the shore, the police unleashed torrents of tear gas into their eyes as they shivered in waistdeep waves. Serna’s footage was watched by thousands of people on Unicorn Riot’s Facebook page. But viewers couldn’t see that, behind the lens, Serna swallowed mouthfuls of water and tear gas to get the perfect shot from, literally, a fish’s-eye view.