WEEK 6.1

Quotes relevant to question 1:

• “HCR 108, PL 280, relocation, and the Pick-Sloan dams did not just promote assimilation — they enforced genocide and elimination.” (https://therednation.org/2016/09/18/fighting-for-our-lives-nodapl-in-context/)
• “Our Nation is made up of some of the poorest people in the Western hemisphere organizing to oppose a fossil fuel industry made up of some of the most powerful and wealthiest people on the planet.”(https://therednation.org/2016/09/18/fighting-for-our-lives-nodapl-in-context/)
• “Like our ancestors’ wars of the nineteenth century, our current war is also defensive — it is to protect water and land from inevitable spoliation in the name of profit. “(https://therednation.org/2016/09/18/fighting-for-our-lives-nodapl-in-context/)
• “The camp and the Standing Rock reservation are under constant surveillance. The reason: Native bodies stand between corporations and their money. Halting the accumulation of capital, which in this context is the exploitation of our river and lands, has piqued settler ire and spite.”(https://therednation.org/2016/09/18/fighting-for-our-lives-nodapl-in-context/)
• “The colonial state does not possess, and never has possessed, the moral high ground.”(https://therednation.org/2016/09/18/fighting-for-our-lives-nodapl-in-context/)
• (13:42) “The city of Bismark didn’t want the contamination of their water supply and so what they chose to do instead was to build it closer to the reservation so it would only contaminate, offensively, native water”
• (39:30) “it’s really about indigenous sovereignty in that these bold statements are being made by people from the top who are so removed from these communities and these places and who just want to profit off of that in any way they can”(https://kepw.org/water-is-life-2-spiritual-perspectives-on-water-and-the-pacific-connector-pipeline-jordan-cove/)  (Ada Ball)

Question 1: In what ways has a “language of colonization” or enforcement of western cultural norms been used to justify a legal or governmental decision? How does this separate us from the consequences of our actions, or remove ethics and morality by utilizing a lens of legality? Do we use laws, acts, and treaties to remove ourselves from the blame? Or are we using them to view ourselves as intellectual and highly developed? Is this “legal” or disconnected language, used to refer to people and nature, mirrored in the way these stories have been reported or shared?

Quotes relevant to question 2:

• (3:40) “People are almost 70% water and by blessing the water we are blessing all that runs through our bodies” (https://kepw.org/water-is-life-2-spiritual-perspectives-on-water-and-the-pacific-connector-pipeline-jordan-cove/) (Hafiz Leland)
• (16:04) I believe in all that has never yet been spoken (by Rainer Maria Rilke)

May what i do flow from me like a river,

No forcing and no holding back,

The way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

These deepening tides moving out,

Returning i will sing you as no one ever has.

Streaming through widening channels, into the open sea.

• (47:40) “the strength of any movement is going to be the strength of honoring the local voices of wherever you are because they are the most knowledgeable […] What was successful at standing rock was when those local voices were being listened to, and heard, and followed.” (https://kepw.org/water-is-life-2-spiritual-perspectives-on-water-and-the-pacific-connector-pipeline-jordan-cove/) (Ada Ball)
• (4:10) “Specifically young indigenous women have a different voice and different perspective that could offer a corrective and is offering a corrective to the climate justice movement and the optics of its intervention” (http://culturesofenergy.com/ep-33-standing-rock-feat-jaskiran-dhillon-nick-estes/)
• -(6:31) “advocating for the water and reminding people that we do have this relationship with water but it’s also a responsibility that depends on reciprocity and the water that we are fortunate to have access to mostly in the pacific northwest is pristine in the way it is because of the indigenous people of those places taking care of it and having that relationship with the water”(https://kepw.org/water-is-life-2-spiritual-perspectives-on-water-and-the-pacific-connector-pipeline-jordan-cove/) (Ada Ball)

Question 2: How can we use the framework and examples set by indigenous movements to create further change in this country? Can we use these strategies to fight for natural or human rights without the same indigenous connection? How can we connect and be appreciative of our world? And does this require a change in our culture/society?