Samain                                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

I’ve not written here about the Standing Rock protests. At least not much. Neither have I posted about them on Facebook though many, many of my friends have. Several people I know, including ex-wife Judy Merritt, have been out there. She’s going a second time this week.

The issues are complex because they deal with pipelines, fracked oil, climate change and the string of broken promises that have been U.S./Indian treaty relations. The simple issue concerns the possible contamination of water for the Standing Rock Reservation. The current route of the pipeline takes it under the Missouri River near the res. Pipelines break. This is common knowledge and documented well. The objection is reasonable and has not been refuted by the developers of the pipeline.

Then, there are burial grounds. The Standing Rock folks don’t want the graves of their ancestors dug up for a project that will add to the growing carbon load in the atmosphere. What if the project’s economically feasible path took it through any of the many National Cemeteries around the country? Easy to see the problem from that perspective.

Building more pipelines and fracking in the North Dakota oil field for more oil actively contributes to the climate change problem. Keep it in the ground would solve the Standing Rock problem and aid in carbon sequestration.

Most poignant, of course, is the dismal Federal record of maintaining treaty accords, of forcing native children to go to “indian schools,” of slaughtering bands and tribes, of moving whole nations from their homelands, of keeping reservations poor. It is an even more original sin than slavery. I learned about it from my home state, Oklahoma, the end of the trail of tears.

The tragedy here is that the tragedy is not new. We’ve left a trail of broken promises and whatever happens at Standing Rock will likely reinforce that trail.

The promise and the hope of Standing Rock is the amazing national and international gathering of native peoples in solidarity with the water protectors. White allies, too. And, perhaps even more amazing, a contingent of former military folks going out to guard the water protectors. This may usher in a new era of cross-border alliances for native people all over the world.