By Maddie Laplante-Dube, Editorial Editor
Standing Rock, ND is currently the site of the convergence of the two biggest issues of our time: racism and environmentalism. A goldmine of relevant themes, American media has been flocking to the site to cover the issues in what Internet users joke is the most turbulent year in the twenty-first century.
But the reality is that 2016 isn't a turbulent year; it's just somehow been a time of such blatant regression that Americans are finally being confronted with the fact that this country is not actually the land of the free. It is, however, the home of the brave. And the brave are the ones fighting for rights in a country that promised to give them rights hundreds of years ago.
Standing Rock is our most recent, but certainly not the only, example. North Dakota, a state named after a Native American tribe, is currently playing out nineteenth-century themes between white, corporate/ governmental enforcement and the native population at Standing Rock.
This section of North Dakota, allotted to the Sioux tribe by the federal government after they were forced onto sanctioned land, is now adjacent to property coveted by Energy Transfer, who have already begun construction of their 1,172 mile-long pipeline running through and along Sioux property. The pipeline will almost certainly contaminate the water in the Missouri River and will decimate sacred land that does not belong to Energy Transfer or to the state and federal governments.
Worse: on Oct. 9th, the federal appeals court rejected the Sioux tribe's plea for a federal block of Energy Transfer's construction. And despite a request from the Obama administration to halt construction and the forbiddance to run the pipeline underneath the Missouri River, the Fortune 500 Company is headed directly for waterfront building.
For the water protectors protesting on site, holding their ground means getting mace to the face, gaining an arrest record and enduring even more humiliation and disregard for tradition by both state and federal governments.
This event is a revolution, seeing tribes who have not interacted with each other in years and who have to put aside their 100-year-old moral disputes to fight for one tribe's physical rights and all tribes' symbolic rights in this nation. And yet, they are being demonized by police forces as "rioters" and "terrorists." Congrats, American law enforcement. You have no idea who you were trained to protect.
This is not the first time that climate change and ambivalence towards environmentalism has disproportionately affected minorities in America. Hurricane Katrina took the homes and livelihoods of millions of Americans, a majority of them being black and Hispanic, and response efforts during the Bush administration were abhorrently, horrifically slow. Thousands of people died in Louisiana and Mississippi, and still, somehow, we don't have an accurate death toll of the victims there.
The protestors and water protectors at Standing Rock are doing something to change the course of history for America, to stop the pipeline and stop potential pollution.
As we ironically head into November, the month of "Thanksgiving," think about what you can do to be part of the revolution besides "checking in" on Facebook.
laplanmm@miamioh.edu