Bill McKibben in Grist: After 525 years, it’s time to actually listen to Native Americans

Joe CatronBill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, a founder of 350.org (which co-sponsored a rally at the U.S. District Courthouse in Washington, D.C. held in solidarity with the indigenous resistance against DAPL, the Dakota Access Pipeline), and a member of Grist’s board of directors, has published an article at Grist, which begins:

The center of the fight for our planet’s future shifts. But this week it’s on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation straddling the border between North Dakota and South Dakota. There, tribal members have been, well, standing like a rock in the way of the planned Dakota Access Pipeline, a huge hose for collecting oil out of the Bakken shale and carrying it off to the Midwest and the Gulf where it can be made into gasoline.

The standoff has been picturesque and dramatic, featuring American Indians on horseback. But mostly it’s been brave and lonely, far from most journalists and up against the same forces that have made life hard for Indigenous Peoples for centuries.

The U.S. Army, for instance. It’s the Army Corps of Engineers that last month granted Energy Transfer Corporation the permit necessary to start construction near the reservation, despite a petition signed by 150,000 people, and carried—on foot—by young people from the reservation all the way to Washington. That would be the same U.S. Army that—well, google “Wounded Knee.” Or “Custer.” “Washita River.” “Pine Ridge.” More.

(The Bismarck Tribune's coverage has pointed out:

In a situation of historical irony, after the work shutdown, law enforcement pulled back from the protest site on Highway 1806 to a communication command center at Fort Lincoln State Park. The park preserves the fort from which the cavalry and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer left to never return after a fatal battle against the Sioux. A replica of Custer’s captured flag was flying among others representing some of the 25 to 30 estimated tribes that have arrived to support Standing Rock since the protest started last week.)