Commentary: The Lakota expression "Mitákuye Oyás’in" points to the connection between all forms of life. Human life exists in relationship to other living beings, who are regarded as relatives with whom we depend on ecological balance. While most of us carry on with our daily obstacles and pleasures, human history is on a disastrous course. Yet we find embers of hope in the example being set by the Standing Rock Sioux and other indigenous communities as they challenge the construction of a pipeline through tribal sites and burial grounds, and under riverways that provide them with their drinking water. The Dakota Access pipeline would carry fracked crude oil from the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota to Illinois, linking with another pipeline to carry that oil to the Gulf of Mexico.
As a writer situated in New Mexico, which depends heavily on fossil fuel industries, I am addressing a sensitive topic. Yet our state's budget woes can be partly attributed to poor industry diversification: too much of our general revenue is dependent on oil and gas, which leaves us vulnerable to the business cycles of that industry. Moreover, it makes us dependent on extractive industries that are pushing ecological systems to the point of collapse. We live under a perverse incentive when decreased demand for oil is bad news for us. Decreased demand for oil is essential for human survival.
The road we are on leads us off a cliff; the people in charge of that road deny the cliff exists even though we can now see it; and governments tend to side with the road-makers. In North Dakota, indigenous Americans have led a non-violent resistance movement to protect tribal lands, uphold treaties between the United States and native nations (which state and federal governments have historically flouted) , and block construction of a $3.8 billion pipeline built by a partnership of private capital and the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Dakota Access LLC, owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, resorted to violence on Labor Day weekend, as construction crews proceeded to destroy burial sites and employed a security company to attack people with dogs while law enforcement officers watched passively. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, the one journalist on the scene whose reporting and video footage were picked up worldwide, has been charged with criminal trespass - a retributive attack on journalism. No one involved in these attacks has been charged. The resistance remained steadfastly non-violent. The government halted construction on federal land and asked the company to cease work 20 miles east and west of Lake Oahe as a courtesy. The company declined to do that, and the resistance - along with arrests - continues as I write.
These are not merely protesters. They call themselves protectors; they are also teaching us about responsibility and citizenship. As Noam Chomsky put it, we mislead ourselves in thinking that citizenship means "every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world." Those other guys tend to view you the way you might view ants. This is why history cannot be left to corporate executives and the politicians who facilitate their business. This is why our participation in history cannot be limited to marking a ballot once in a while. Some struggles, especially the struggle to confront pipelines and transform how we produce and consume energy, require human beings outside power to assume the means of making history through sustained and courageous direct action. We do so on behalf of all our relations.
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Algernon D'Ammassa writes the "Desert Sage" column for the Deming Headlight and Sun News papers. Write to him atDesertSageMail@gmail.com.