It’s easy to do what I am doing right now. It’s easy to sit safely in my room behind a computer screen and write about why the Dakota Access Pipeline is a bad thing. As a woman of privilege, polluted waters will never reach my sink or my shower. In all reality, I will never know the struggles of the Sioux that are fighting for their livelihood.
I don’t say “I Stand with Standing Rock” because it’s a hot-button issue on Facebook, or because it’s trendy to care about the environment. I say “I Stand with Standing Rock” because of how deeply I admire and respect those that do what so many of us are afraid of doing: taking action and risking it all for what’s important.
It’s not easy to get up, travel to the Great Plains of North Dakota, and stand on the front lines of conflict at Standing Rock. It’s not easy to put yourself at risk of being arrested, beaten, or worse in order to defend your land. But then again, it’s even more difficult to realize that you don’t have a choice other than to do so. The tribes at Standing Rock are not simply defending sacred land, they are defending the water that provides nourishment, life, and sustenance to an entire populace that would suffer insurmountably if it became polluted.
If constructed, the Dakota Access Pipeline would cross the Missouri River and its tributaries as one of the several industrial pipelines that tear through land in order to transport fuel across the country. Pipelines are frequently the source of natural gas leaks and explosions, like the blowout on October 31 that left one person dead in Alabama. If allowed to cross the Missouri, the pipeline would endanger the water quality and safety of thousands of Native Americans.
The decision to route across Native American lands is one of the most recent examples of the systemic racism that has battered and destroyed entire tribes for hundreds of years. In its earlier stages, the DAPL was routed through the more northern city of Bismark. Residents of the city, which is 91.9% white, successfully convinced the pipeline developers to reroute the project as it would contaminate the municipal water supply. The Army Corps of Engineers and Energy Transfer Partners, the development company, legitimized the concerns of leakage and contamination and agreed to reroute the pipeline. The decision to cross the Sioux water supply and ignore the call of water protectors conveys that the Native Americans who drink from the Missouri do not deserve clean drinking water.
Not only is it deplorable that the pipeline was rerouted to cross Native American land and water supply, the treatment of the water defenders is chilling. Peaceful and religious demonstrations on the reservation have been met with guard dogs, tanks, tear gas, concussion grenades, and officers in riot gear. Imagine defending your own water supply by sitting in prayer circles and consequently being tear-gassed, beaten and thrown in prison. If this possibility is unimaginable to you, therein lies the depth of the injustice that is occurring at Standing Rock.
This is the reality of those that actually stand at Standing Rock. They do not have the privilege of ‘checking in’ on Facebook, or quietly thinking about the atrocities that are happening in North Dakota. The water protectors are actively defending their right to live off of their own land in a beautiful example of how to stand up for what is right.
So before reposting a Buzzfeed video or copying and pasting a ready-made status explaining your thoughts on Standing Rock, acknowledge the danger and the legitimacy of the problems that the Sioux and other tribes are facing. Recognize that if you can’t physically stand at the reservation, you can do so much to help those that are.
Visit the Standing Rock website to donate money or find a way to send materials like food, toiletries, and other necessities to the reservation. More importantly, advocate for cleaner and safer energy, because there is a better way.