As more and more news cycles pick it up, the protest in North Dakota is spurring many questions around the globe. More and more people are becoming concerned with what is happening in North Dakota. Since April, Native Americans, environmentalists, business owners, famous actors, and actresses have all been flocking to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest the constructions of the Dakota Access Pipeline. As a Native American and an aspiring environmentalist, this protest is rocking strong parts within me and others like me across the country.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is set to pass just half a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, through sacred land and across crucial watersheds for the surrounding areas. This protest, hailing Native Americans from Tribes as far as Washington State and Maine, is the largest Native American protest in history. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter have joined in solidarity, confessing that these actions against the Sioux Tribes of North Dakota closely mimic those taken in places like Flint, MI.
Being Native American in a time like this is hard. It is hard to be across the country, going through regular day-to-day functions and have your people fighting for their rights to soil and drinking water, free of intoxication. It is hard to be Native American and to not be able to fully understand what that feels like. People just like me, stand at the ready every day because they fear if they don't, they could lose viable drinking water. I will never know what that is like. Even as a Native American, my life has not been without the aura of privilege. I can only stand where I am, in Indiana and hope for the best. Reservations already have a tally of things that would cause most Americans to render the space uninhabitable, but American Indians have been surviving on reservations for decades now. The last thing they need is for an oil pipeline to burst and ruin the livelihood they have been forced to make on some of the most desolate lands in the United States.
I was raised in a city. I never lived on a reservation. I have no idea what it is like to live on a reservation. I have never had to protest to protect my rights to clean water. But I watch my people gather at the Standing Rock Reservation, and I feel an immense swell of pride. I am proud to be a Native American, a member of an ethnicity that has been dragged through the mud and given the short end of the stick too often, but remains. The Native American people know defeat, but they also know strength. A strength that is found in a forgotten people that can rally for their rights, grab news headlines around the world, cause judicial proceedings to occur, and halt construction. It is a good time to be a proud Native American.
