“ARTICLE 1. From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease. The Government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they now pledge their honor to maintain it.”
This is the opening article of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, forged between the United States government and Sioux peoples of the Dakotas. It is a typical opening paragraph of Indian-Government treaties, ensuring that hostilities between the US and the indigenous populations ceased, so that the United States could more easily progress through Indian territory. Since we sit here today across the several states, it is easy to believe that this ceasefire has been maintained with honor and integrity, and that we—the United States—are finally at peace with the various tribes within our borders.
If you ask a Native American, however, most could tell you that they know they are still at war.
Native people's face many battles day to day, whether it be gaining better access to amenities, protecting their hunting rights, or preserving their heritage against a world that seeks to forget them. They struggle against the "mascot" problem, misrepresentation and under representation, and a self-defeating attitude that leads many Natives to give up on their culture, health and dreams. Those battlefields are for another day.
Today's battlefield is the current controversy between the Standing Rock Sioux tribe—which lays squarely between the border of North and South Dakota—and the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project of the US-based company Energy Transfer. Before I continue, it is important to note that this will not be an article discussing the problem of Native American treaties and land in general; intrusion by the US Government upon treaty-bound tribally held land is not unusual. In what could be one of his most famous historical works, Howard Zinn, in “A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present”, states “The United States government has signed more than four hundred treaties with Indians and violated every single one.” Whether it be fishing-rights infringement in Washington State, or the building of highways right here in Arizona, the US seems to be seeking to set a world record with breaking what are supposedly legally binding documents between it and other sovereign parties. The Pipeline issue in the Dakotas is nothing new, just another check on a long list of broken promises. But the act of representing it in print, while the country tries to wish to problem away, can set it apart from the hundreds of other violations that Zinn has mentioned. And that is what this article is about: Representation.
The Dakota Access issue revolves around the proposed building of a new oil pipeline this year, barely outside the borders of the Standing Sioux reservation; the pipeline map can be compared to the boundaries of the Sioux reservation, where it can easily be seen that the project is literally taking place in their backyard. While, after careful scrutiny, it is apparent that the Access route is not made through the Reservation itself, there are problems that still persist. Valerie Talliman, a member of the Navajo Nation, wrote that the pipeline runs within a half-mile of the Sioux Reservation, as well as crosses nearby Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, which local tribal leaders claim is their “main source of irrigation and drinking water”. Most reservations--as the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation by the group Indians of All Tribes brought to national attention--already struggle for fresh water as it is. Any project that threatens the access or quality of that water can be potentially life threatening to a people that have already had so much taken from them, and have been given back so little.
Furthermore, since the Sioux people occupied the region long before the presence of the United States, their sacred sites and burial grounds are not restricted to the bounds of their Reservation. many of them lying directly in the route of the pipeline and project area. In the same way it is difficult for the average American to imagine an energy company building a project through a Civil War cemetery, or a small burial site behind an old church, it is unthinkable to the Native peoples that this project will desecrate their burial grounds--and rightly so. Yet another legal document, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, mentions Native American tribes 18 times in reference to the need to preserve their cultural, religious and sacred sites, for, in the document's words, "the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people." And yet, the Sioux are seeing an energy company attempt to wholly disregard their heritage in the name of expediency.
The resulting disputes have drawn protesters from all across the country to challenge the efforts of the pipeline in what protesters see as yet another violation of Native American rights. James MacPherson of the Associated Press writes for the Native American Times that, since the protests began, about 30 individuals have been arrested for halting development of the pipeline. Protests conducted by Native Americans do not typically garner as much attention as a Ferguson or a Baton Rouge—but that does not make them any less important or life changing. The fact that they are hardly ever covered does a disservice to the act of protesting, a right Americans are seen to laud the benefits of--but only when they can muster media hype, it seems.
In 1996, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13007, which outlined procedures to be taken to avoid “adversely” affecting locations sacred to Tribes within the United States, much like the Historic Preservation Act. Furthermore, in the Treaty of Fort Laramie mentioned above, Article II states that the Dakotas reservation territory is “set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians herein named… and henceforth [the United States] will and do hereby relinquish all claims or right in and to any portion of the United States or Territories, except such as is embraced within the limits aforesaid, and except as hereinafter provided.”
Or, in other words, the land was to be left to the managing of the tribes, without interference from outside parties. However, as was the method of past interaction between the Government and the indigenous people, there was a stipulation hidden in the Treaty, in its 11th Article, “[The Sioux] withdraw all pretence of opposition to the construction of the railroad now being built along the Platte River and westward to the Pacific Ocean, and they will not in future object to the construction of railroads, wagon-roads, mail-stations, or other works of utility or necessity, which may be ordered or permitted by the laws of the United States.”
Treaties such as this often included loopholes and legal jargon that the tribes did—and were not capable of—fully understanding. An argument can be made, then, that this pipeline counts as a “work of utility”, and that their resistance to its construction is baseless and contradictory to the terms of the Treaty. However, the issue becomes murky when it is revealed that there was a second proposed route for the Dakota Access, with the alternate being a northern route near Bismarck. However, this route was abandoned when the US Army Corp of Engineers decided that it “would be near and could jeopardize the drinking water of the residents in the city of Bismarck.”
It would seem, then, that the Dakota Access was built through the “lesser” of two evils.
Indians have, historically, always been chosen as a scapegoat when it comes to progress in the United States. Navajo men were given the “opportunity” to mine uranium on the Navajo reservation, leaving them with a legacy of radiation poisoning and broken trust. Alcatraz Island was occupied to protest the abysmal living conditions on reservations across the United States, and to show that a barren, lifeless place like Alcatraz was “perfect” for a new reservation against the precedent of what most other reservations are like. Now, the Standing Rock Sioux and Hunkpapa Nation have been “chosen” to help expedite a project of “utility” in the name of United States gains, left to foot the bill of a move that would have jeopardized the drinking water of good, American people.
The fate of Native Americans is intimately bound with that of the general American public. Though their stories, achievements and tragedies are typically excluded from mainstream media, the mainstream media directly impacts their stories. I have been a self-taught scholar of Native American history in my search to learn more about my own Apache an Tarahumara blood, from my Great Grandparents and before them. News of this nature is not just another article, or another “current event”; this is a story of the well-being of an entire people, a story that is too often neglected in favor of forgetting bad blood, of ignoring history and hope. The only time Americans want to think of Native Americans and reservations is when they want to gamble in Indian casinos, sleep in Indian resorts and buy cigars from Indian trading posts on their way to better diversions. Americans only think of Indians when they buy dream catcher themed shirts from shopping outlets, or buy shoes styled after moccasins. Americans don’t want to think of reservations and Indians struggling for water rights, struggling for education or healthcare, struggling for recognition as an area full of people with stories to tell—just like any State we live in. This piece is, out of necessity, littered with links to these stories, because they hardly ever see the light of day. No one uses Google to search “Native American news”, or “Native American current events”. No one looks for Native American art, poetry, innovators, entrepreneurs, musicians or historical figures—unless they’re doing a project. Reading Native American histories and family trees, looking for family and stories, is not limited to a week-long project; it’s not something to just be studied. I try to live stories like this, because these types of histories are a part of me. These are a people that Americans’ think are time-locked in tipis, still hunting buffalo. Native Americans are an evolving collective, waging wars in court where once they waged it against Calvary; playing at music festivals, where once they played war drums; seeking to mend and fix promises that once were all broken. This is the story of a pipe line, of broken treaties, of a modern legal battle, of the Sioux—and, by proxy, all Native Americans in this country. Because, at one time or another, something was built on ancestral ground—a house, a freeway, a new strip-mall, or a pipe line. What were once pipe dreams of elders fearing the encroaching ways of European culture now comes as Dakota Access, no dream, but a harsh reality threatening the Standing Sioux way of life.
And these peaceful protests against it sound a lot like war drums and broken treaties.
