Last Thursday, while families from across the United States gathered to share love, food and heated political debates, several thousand Native Americans and their supporters protested the injustices perpetrated against them by the North Dakota government due to the construction of the new Dakota Access Pipeline.
Not only have members of the Standing Rock Oceti Sakowin tribe, better known as the Sioux, been fighting against the building of the pipeline, but various celebrities, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Pharrell Williams, have also voiced their support for abandoning the project.
While there are benefits, such as lessening the amount of oil the United States imports, to the pipeline being constructed, it will have a disastrous and inhumane effect on the Sioux. While the pipeline will not directly cut across their reservation, it will go under the Missouri River, the tribe’s main source of water and therefore contaminate it.
In other words, the nation’s economic needs are being prioritized over those of indigenous people. It’s bad enough that we already stole their land. Now we have to crush what little of it they have left.
In times like these, our country needs a hero, and while politicians have done very little to stop the pipeline’s construction, the stars of the upcoming “Justice League” film have used their celebrity influence to speak out against the pipeline’s construction.
Ben Affleck, Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller, the stars of the DC superhero film, have filmed an endorsement for Standing Rock Youth’s Rezpect Our Water campaign on change.org.
“As a gang of earth defenders, we want to send a big shout out to the Oceti Sakowin and those who stand with them in opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Miller said in the video.
Katy Perry made a long statement on Instagram on Thanksgiving day discussing the importance of understanding and helping the Sioux during this time.
“During this holiday and beyond, let us stand in solidarity with all those who are trying to protect it,” Perry said in the post. “I made a donation, and I hope you can too today.”
Another way celebrities contributed to this cause was through a Standing Rock benefit concert in Washington, D.C. The concert featured artists Dave Matthews, Graham Nash, Neko Case and Ledisi. Even former Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein fought against the government’s building of the pipeline during her campaign.
“The Dakota Access Pipeline is vandalism on steroids,” Stein tweeted.
She did more than tweet about it, however. An arrest warrant was issued for Stein after she spray-painted “I approve this message” on a bulldozer on the site. I may not have agreed with her policies, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect her toughness.
While the protests continued Thanksgiving, actress Shailene Woodley did a video interview with TYT Politics about the real carnage associated with the history of Thanksgiving and how treatment of Native Americans really hasn’t improved within the last 400 years.
“Thanksgiving was founded on a massacre, and yet here we are with these cops with snipers with rubber bullets, and honest, I’m just sick of it,” Woodley said in the interview. “I’m sick of it.”
Woodley has undoubtedly been the biggest celebrity voice against the government’s treatment of the Sioux. Last month on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a day meant to celebrate and remember the natives in our land, the “Divergent” star was arrested on charges of criminal trespassing and engaging in a riot.
Ten days later, she wrote a statement about her arrest for Time Magazine. It brought more awareness and understanding to how selfish our government has been toward Native Americans and how the pipeline could also affect non-Native Americans in the long run.
“Don’t let the automatic sink faucets in your homes fool you,” Woodley said in the statement. “That water comes from somewhere, and the second its source is contaminated, so is your bathtub, and your sink and your drinking liquid.”
We cannot change the past atrocities we have performed on our country’s native peoples, but we will always have a chance to improve the conditions with which we left them. They have been in this land the longest, yet they are still the most mistreated minorities in the U.S. To stand with Standing Rock is to stand with your own humanity.
afaulds@indiana.edu
@a_faulds9615
