Social justice 12

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could change the conversation around

future.

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north of the reservation border, cross several sacred sites, and burrow under

- ect desecrates sacred burial grounds.

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region’s watershed.

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brothers and sisters and non-native

corners of Turtle Island to the Morton

riverside gathering grew so large that

a line has been drawn for indigenous

NATIONS

RISING across north america indigenous people are pushing for a renewable energy future.

by Ron Johnson

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threatening their future, again, and

the nearby city that has a largely white

Daily acts of nonviolent civil

by dogs, shot at with rubber bullets,

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and Energy Transfer announced that

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With winter setting in and a Donald

end.

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- ers, to industry, and to each other that

and we are ready for a sustainable,

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I N MANY WAYS, THE MOVEMENT at - ing strength and visibility of indigenous

- tion of native resistance against settler

First Nations’ land and water. Farther

life and their own right to eat.

reservation in Montana.

battles being fought across the conti-

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- ciation with a handful of local allies.

In September, meals at the Sacred Stone Camp were prepared for upwards of 2,500 people at a time, with volunteers preparing food, manning the grill, stirring the gigantic pots, and chopping wood to keep the fire stoked all day long.

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zuzeca sape land, bringing with it destruction and

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rightful role as stewards of the land. “It

and they would guide us to a better

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endangered forests and waterways on native lands.

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the Eel River Bar First Nation in New

Minister Trudeau following through

Nations Declaration on the Rights of

now has a strong and growing base

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negotiation. -

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the water are everything. “[My grand-

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can unify and we can beat this. We can

and infrastructure in their territories.

alternative energy. Signatories to the treaty, which has now been signed by

Standing Rock represents the growing

strength of the indigenous climate

justice movement.

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tribes to sign onto the treaty.

be able to get a better dialogue [with -

of Two Mountains in southwestern

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W ith broader alliances have

was the case in historical battles against

fundraise, and use nonviolent civil dis-

challenges in court based on treaty rights.

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battles fought by their elders, that is

civil disobedience actions. “Most of us have aunties and uncles

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as residential schools. But the scars -

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Water protectors and state security personnel face-off across a fence near the pipeline construction site.

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culture, and everything changed.

their hunting grounds were destroyed

We’ve lost battles but we’ve won even

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that is generally blind to their stories.

coverage, resonated all the way around the world, to the very highest levels of

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going to review the tribal consultation

How do we issue these permits [for pipelines and other similar projects]? What does tribal consultations mean? …

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by other entities over the land, but

courts to fully engage and honor treaty

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with each other.

have buried a long-standing grudge

- tion to their traditional seal hunts and

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“Native people are catalyzing a very

critical examination of the mechanized,

industrailzed worldview.”

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have to lead the charge.

are going to save us are indigenous

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F OR MANY TRIBAL LEADERS and

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regions where there is no other indus-

We need your help. They are destroying everything.’ So

crisis at the Bioneers conference.

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in related businesses.

she was devastated by what she found. “I saw the land. It had turned into a

AN INTERSECTIONAL MOVEMENT Native leaders and scholars have repeat- edly pointed out the limitations of framing Standing Rock and other indigenous opposi- tion to fossil fuel extraction as purely a climate justice movement. These movements, they say, are simply the latest manifesta- tion of native peoples’ long and checkered struggle against settler colonialism.

“We are struggling against constant erasure and the fact that people still don’t realize that colonialism exists,” says Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux), a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. “People don’t honestly believe we exist in many ways, so there’s misconception about us. They don’t know that four-out-of- five native people don’t live on reservations. Popular imagination places us in rural lands, while we are incredibly urbanized. That doesn’t mean we are any less authentic.”

The indigenous climate justice movement,

Estes says, is linked to the radical American Indian Movement of the 1960s and ’70s that was involved in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, mounted the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington DC in 1972, and led the Wounded Knee armed uprising of 1973 that drew worldwide attention to the treatment of Native Americans.

“People are saying this is the first time we have united like this since the nineteenth century, but I think that’s a misconception of us as a people,” says Estes, who is also a co-founder of The Red Nation, a coalition dedicated to native liberation that’s been active at Standing Rock. “For example, in 1974 at this very place, at Standing Rock [Reservation], the International Indian Treaty Council brought together more than 19 indigenous nations from across the world — from Mexico, Canada, Nicaragua, and

all [across] North and South America. That council was fundamental in the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The current movement builds on those existing struggles, though I think organizing and unifying in this particular way is significant.”

Indigenous climate justice scholar and activist Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi) agrees. The history of Native American activ- ism is pockmarked with internal squabbles that have come in the way of many of their legal and cultural survival struggles, he points out. “But since [the] 1970s, we have had a global indigenous movement that has become the largest non-State participating sector in the United Nations,” he says. “So, I think the correct thing to say is that tribes themselves have been working together, net- working more and more globally over the last 40 years, and that has made possible some of the heightened attention we are seeing on the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

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- My daughter will

never see those things. I’m going to do whatever is necessary to stop it.

felt that they didn’t have any

would lose everything they had. They

Things have changed since then.

hydrocarbons released into the air and -

We’ve got to stop the tar sands expansion. We need renewable energy!

several lawsuits against the oil industry,

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None of this is a coincidence. This has to do with the fact that our very existence, our values and

to the water, to the air, to the

the fauna. It’s our connections to those things that allow us to have solutions to how not only to

but also to ensure the future will

things are critical and essential

Not only that, she says, native

Indeed, the validity and value of indigenous ecological

growing recognition by both

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global authority on the status of the

to safeguard it.

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because they are starting to understand

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The indigenous worldview, which

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For many tribal leaders the struggle for climate justice is also about trying to build sustainable economies

that aren’t dependent on extractive industries.

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and restoration, she says. “Instead of

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land is understood as a living entity, as

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each other. We need to do it together

T HE NEED TO RISE TOGETHER is

restrictions against coal, oil, and natural gas extraction, and reviving

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want to renegotiate the contracts to

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Energy Transfer.

invested billions of dollars and the

now faces, things were in a sort of

but we have also re-grounded ourselves

EIJ. “We are still dig-

warriors, and everything else. But the

left with nothing and the choice is a

Ron Johnson, a Toronto-based journalist, is an editor for Post City magazines. Maureen Nandini Mitra and Sara Lafleur-Vetter provided additional reporting.

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