Prominent Native American filmmaker, journalist and professor Myron Dewey died Sunday in a car crash in Nevada. He was 49 years old. Dewey was the founder of the media production company Digital Smoke Signals, which shared live footage from the frontlines of the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline in Standing Rock. Democracy Now! met Dewey in North Dakota in 2016 as he faced a misdemeanor stalking charge for using a drone to take video of unlicensed private pipeline security workers. Those charges would ultimately be dropped.

Myron Dewey: “There is an arrest warrant for me stalking the Dakota Access pipeline security, which these are guys that had no badges, no names, no license plates. So, it’s a little intimidating when you see these guys looking like Navy SEALs in the back, you know, when you’re traveling, when you’re documenting. You know, I came as a filmmaker and digital storyteller, and I’m leaving now as an environmental justice filmmaker and journalist.”