For all its notoriety as climate crusaders, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe did not ask for that mantle. Their lawsuit, in which they are represented by the environmental group Earthjustice, does not mention carbon or fossil fuels. For that matter, it doesn’t mention racism. It focuses strictly on two issues: potential pollution of their water source in the event of a spill and the disturbance of sacred sites. And yet their defiance has stirred the pot, and in this moment of galvanization, other indigenous Americans are bringing to the table ideas that combine the often-estranged progressive causes of ecology and racial justice.
“Climate change is inherently racist,” said Nick Estes, co-founder of activist organization the Red Nation and a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. “The Anthropocene began with fossil fuel extraction, which began with colonization. The rise of temperatures began with the industrial revolution. And the damage was done to ‘expendable people,’ exploiting the labor of black people and the land of indigenous people.”
Gone is the 19th-century attempt to defeat Europeans or the 20th-century attempt to assimilate. The strategy now is to marshal attorneys, money, land, and political clout to outlast them. “I call us the weebee people,” said Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “We be here when they came, we be here when they gone.”
Perhaps the most startling idea to emerge is a full upending of the narrative of the benevolent—perhaps paternalistic—white liberal uplifting the oppressed minority. People I met here felt that white people had strayed so far from their spiritual core that it was the Indian who would have to rescue them. A Pawnee hip-hop artist who calls himself Quese IMC (born Marcus Frejo Little Eagle), with black beard, hoop earrings, thick-rimmed glasses, and a cocked ball cap, told me that both racism and exploitation of the earth came from the same sickness: a lack of spirituality, which breeds a lack of compassion for other beings. “The earth is a spirit, the water is a spirit, and if you have no spirit, and you have no connection to those things, it will be easy to destroy them and not even care.”
When I asked Chief LittleSun what was so great about the gathering, he said, “The spiritual part of this movement. This ground is the holiest place on earth right now.” This was the first time in his entire life that he’d taken part in any sort of protest or movement. I asked if he considered himself an environmentalist. LittleSun shook his head. “I don’t even know what that is.” It was as if I’d asked him if he were if a “skin-ist” or a “body-ist.” He simply didn’t think of himself as an entity separate from the earth.
Speaking to the main camp circle, Begaye compared the Navajo code talkers who helped defeat Hitler to Native Americans today leading the fight to protect land and water. “We have always saved the white people from themselves!” he declared, and the crowd roared its approval.
About Stand with standing rock
Stories about the indigenous leaders protecting land and water, building fair economies, and standing up for racial justice in North America and beyond.
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