Ea O Ka Aina: Water Protectors

Showing posts with label Water Protectors. Show all posts

'Necessity Defense' to save Earth

SUBHEAD: Those arrested argue saving the planet justified illegal sand pipeline shutdown.

By Jessica Corbitt on 5 October 2018 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/05/landmark-necessity-defense-trial-valve-turners-will-argue-saving-planet-justified)

Image above: A trial for (from left) Emily Nesbitt Johnston, Benjamin Joldersma, and Annette Klapstein regarding their participation in a 2016 multi-state protest begins on Monday. From original article.

"If we really go out there and sit down in front of the machine, eventually they can no longer operate it. And at this point, that is our only option."

Three activists whose landmark trial is set to begin in Minnesota state court on Monday for their 2016 multi-state #ShutItDown action—which temporarily disabled all tar sands pipelines crossing the U.S.-Canada border—will argue the action was necessary because of the threat that fossil fuels pose to the planet.

Rejecting a challenge from state prosecutors in April, an appeals court ruled that the "valve turners" can present a "necessity defense"—and bring in top climate experts to testify. In June, the Minnesota Supreme Court denied prosecutors' petition to appeal that ruling.

The necessity defense "is a plea that, yes technically we committed a crime, but we did it to prevent a greater harm," explained Annette Klapstein, a retired attorney from the Seattle area and one of the valve turners on trial.

"We cannot work through our political system, because its values are nothing but profit," she told The Nation. "We live in an oligarchy, not a democracy."

"It's very much in the interest of the capitalist political system to make us feel powerless, to make us feel that we can't do anything," she added, but "ultimately, they cannot win if we do not consent.

If we really withdraw our consent, if we really go out there and sit down in front of the machine, eventually they can no longer operate it. And at this point, that is our only option."

Klapstein and Emily Nesbitt Johnston are facing felony charges under Minnesota law for shutting down Enbridge Energy's Line 4 and Line 67.

While Benjamin Joldersma, who assisted them, also faces charges in the case, the state has dropped trespassing charges against videographer Steve Liptay.

The Nation reports that Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens and Harvard Law School's Lawrence Lessig are among the expert witnesses slated to testify.

Dr. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist who has been called "the father of modern climate change awareness," and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben will also testify in case, according to the activist group Climate Direct Action.

"These people deserve our respect and support," McKibben said on Twitter about the valve turners in Minnesota on Friday.

This will be the first of the valve turner cases where those on trial can present a necessity defense, as judges in three states have barred fellow activists from doing so.

In Washington, Ken Ward was found guilty of second degree burglary after his first trial ended with a hung jury. The judge used a "first-time offender waiver" to sentence him to two days in jail, which was fulfilled by time in custody after he was arrested for the 2016 action.

In North Dakota, Michael Foster was convicted of two felonies and a misdemeanor, and sentenced to three years in prison, though he only served six months and was released in August.

Sam Jessup, who livestreamed Foster's action, was convicted of a felony and a misdemeanor, and received a two-year deferred sentence with supervised probation. In Montana, Leonard Higgins was found guilty of a felony and misdemeanor. He received a three-year deferred sentence.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: The futility of Big Green activism 3/29/18
Ea O Ka Aina: Being green is being a terrorist 2/20/18
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL battle not over 6/15/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Defense contractors fought NoDAPL 5/27/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Tribes divest DAPL Bankers 2/13/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Veterans defending NoDAPL 2/11/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps okays DAPL Easement 2/8/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump orders go on DAPL EIS 2/3/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Water Protectors pipeline resistance 2/1/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Force a full EIS on DAPL 1/27/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Missile launcher at Standing Rock 1/19/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Lockdown at Trans-Pecos Pipeline 1/10/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock has changed us 12/9/16
Ea O Ka Aina: As Standing Rock celebrates... 12/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps denies easement 12/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: My Whole Heart is With You 12/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Loving Containment of Courage 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning is Near 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds to shutdown NoDAPL Camp 11/25/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL people are going to die 11/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL 11/22/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Environmentalist going to jail 3/3/11

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Louisiana snubs TigerSwan

SUBHEAD: The state won’t give the security firm that tracked DAPL opponents a license to operate.

By Nikhil Swaminathan on 20 July 2017 for Grist Magazine -
(http://grist.org/briefly/louisiana-wont-give-the-security-firm-that-tracked-dapl-opponents-a-license/)

Image above: TigerSwan mercenaries at Standing Rock were hired by the Dakota Access Pipeline to fight the indigenous Sioux and others protesting the construction of the pipeline. From (http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2017/05/intercept-exposes-tigerswan-mercenaries.html).

The state Board of Private Security Examiners rebuffed the North Carolina company known as TigerSwan, citing a legal complaint filed by a similar North Dakota agency charging that the outfit operated in that state without legal permission.

Fabian Blache III, the board’s executive director, said that Louisiana law governing the private security industry is designed to protect the state’s people. He said TigerSwan — which was denied a license in North Dakota twice — had not shown it could follow regulations.

Internal company documents obtained and reported on separately by Grist and The Intercept last month revealed the extent of TigerSwan’s surveillance operations during last year’s protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that Energy Transfer Partners said it no longer had a security presence on the ground in North Dakota, and TigerSwan said it had ended work with the Dallas-based pipeline developer at the end of June.

But apparently the firm was still seeking to work for Energy Transfer Partners in Louisiana, where the company is currently planning to build a 162-mile pipeline known as Bayou Bridge, which would shuttle refined crude oil to hubs in Texas.

That project, like Dakota Access, faces court challenges.
Regional advocacy groups pleaded with the Louisiana board to deny TigerSwan’s license, citing the type of intrusive surveillance reportedly employed by the company in North Dakota.

“TigerSwan follows people as if we were criminals,” said Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “We can disagree about the pipeline without resorting to such behavior.”

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL battle not over 6/15/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Defense contractors fought NoDAPL 5/27/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Tribes divest DAPL Bankers 2/13/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Veterans defending NoDAPL 2/11/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps okays DAPL Easement 2/8/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump orders go on DAPL EIS 2/3/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Water Protectors pipeline resistance 2/1/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Force a full EIS on DAPL 1/27/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Missile launcher at Standing Rock 1/19/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Lockdown at Trans-Pecos Pipeline 1/10/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock has changed us 12/9/16
Ea O Ka Aina: As Standing Rock celebrates... 12/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps denies easement 12/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: My Whole Heart is With You 12/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Loving Containment of Courage 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning is Near 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds to shutdown NoDAPL Camp 11/25/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL people are going to die 11/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL 11/22/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16

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Waialeale Water Lease

SOURCE: Ken Taylor (littlewheel808@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: A cultural study in preparation for renewal of a sixty-five year lease on Wailua River water.

From Ken Taylor on 18 July 2017 in Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/07/waialeale-water.html)

Image above: "The Blue Hole" is valley shaped by countless waterfalls from "The Weeping Wall" below Waialeale that feed into the largest river in Hawai - the Wailua. From (http://www.onlyinyourstate.com/hawaii/hi-weeping-wall/).

The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) has contracted Cultural Surveys Hawaii to complete a cultural study on the proposed 65 year water lease of North Fork Wailua River, Waikoko, Iliiliula, Waiaka and Waiahi Streams, Puna District, Kauai.

KIUC is currently diverting 100% of the base flow of these mountain streams orgiginating from the Alakai and Mount Waialeale, for hydropower. These 2 KIUC hydropower plants produce only 1% of Kauai's power needs, which now is 90% supplied by solar panels during the day.

The Waiahi Hydropower plants, over a hundred years old, were needed to supply power to Lihue Mill. We now have other power options, that do not depend on diverting 100% of stream water from our forests.

Nicole Ishihara, from Cultural Surveys Hawaii, is coming to Kauai this Thursday and Friday, July 20th & 21st, to talk to Kauai about the impacts of this proposed 65 year lease by KIUC.

She will be available to talk to folks at Hā Coffee Shop in Lihue from 10 am to about 12. We will then meet up at Wailua State Park parking lot, by the Birth Stones, to carpool up to the area of the KIUC diversion (Blue Hole). Vehicles with 4WD are welcome.

Nicole Ishihara will also be available to meet with the community Thursday early evening, and Friday morning until about noon.

This is a chance for Kauai to let their voices be heard about the impacts of the diversion of a culturally important stream, proposed for the next 65 years. A lifetime without Mauka-Makai water connection from Mount Waialeale. It's just not right.

Attached is CSH letter requesting comments, and sample questions. Please let Nicole know the importance of Waialeale water by letter, phone call, chant, dance, art - however you need to express what water from Waialeale means to you, your family and your community, for the next 65 years.

CONTACT
Nicole Ishihara
Cultural Surveys Hawaii
(808) 965-6478
nishihara@culturalsurveys.com

See also concerning Waialeale water rights:
Ea O Ka Aina: The Mo'o and the Well 1/29/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Horizontal Well Presentation 9/19/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Kahili Vampire Project Meeting 9/13/13
Ea O Ka Aina: No to the Horizontal Well 4/11/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Scoping Meeting on Horizontal Well 4/6/13
Ea O Ka Aina: This is for your own good 10/13/12

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First DAPL Spill Reported

SUBHEAD: "Not if, but when the DAPL leaks". The dreaded 'Told You So' moment has arrived.

By Deirdre Fulton on 10 May 2017 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/10/told-you-so-everyone-was-dreading-first-dapl-spill-reported)

Image above: A spill of 84 gallons is small in the pipeline business, but any leak before the line is operational confirms worries indigenous felt and does not bode well for the future. From (http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/North-Dakota-Officials-Tell-Pennsylvania-Go-Big-Go-Fast-Against-Pipeline-Protesters-20170506-0009.html).

Throughout the battle over the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), Indigenous campaigners and their allies repeatedly warned it was not a question of if, but when a breach would occur.

Now, before the pipeline is even fully operational, those warnings have come to fruition.
The Associated Press reports Wednesday:

The Dakota Access pipeline leaked 84 gallons of oil in South Dakota early last month, which an American Indian tribe says bolsters its argument that the pipeline jeopardizes its water supply and deserves further environmental review.

The April 4 spill was relatively small and was quickly cleaned up, and it didn't threaten any waterways. The state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources posted a report in its website's searchable database, but it didn't take any other steps to announce it to the public, despite an ongoing lawsuit by four Sioux tribes seeking to shut down the pipeline.

"At the pipeline's pump station there's what's called a surge tank, which is used to store crude oil occasionally during the regular operation of the pipeline," Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist with the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources Ground Water Quality Program, told Dakota Media Group. "And connected to that tank is a pump, which pumps oil back into the pipeline system, and the leak occurred at that surge pump."

The pipeline operated by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is expected to be in service by June 1.

"As far as this happening during the start-up, I don't want to make it sound like a major event, but the fact that you had oil leaving the tank says there's something not right with their procedures," longtime pipeline infrastructure expert Richard B. Kuprewicz said to Dakota Media Group. "They might have been trying to hurry."

Joye Braun, of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe (one of those still engaged in a legal battle to shut down the pipeline), cited Kuprewicz when explaining why the news was so concerning.

"This leak hits close to home, my home," Braun said. "We have always said it's not if, but when, pipelines leak, and to have someone like Richard B. Kuprewicz—a pipeline infrastructure expert and incident investigator with more than 40 years of energy industry experience—question the integrity and building practices of Dakota Access says something pretty serious could go wrong."

"That worries me," she continued. "South Dakota already faces water shortages and our livelihoods depend on water, from ranching and farming to healthcare. Do we have more spills just waiting to happen? This is our home, our land, and our water. This just proves their hastiness is fueled by greed not in the best interest for tribes or the Dakotas."

News from elsewhere in the country this week hardly helps ETP's case.

Following two spills of millions of gallons of drilling fluids into Ohio wetlands last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has "curtailed work" on ETP's Rover gas pipeline, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

After the spills and 18 reported leaks, the Post reported, FERC

blocked Energy Transfer Partners, which also built the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, from starting horizontal drilling in eight areas where drilling has not yet begun. In other areas, where the company has already begun horizontal drilling, the FERC said drilling could continue.

The FERC also ordered the company to double the number of environmental inspectors and to preserve documents the commission wants to examine as it investigates the spills.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency earlier this week fined ETP $430,000 for damaging the wetland, which an agency spokesman has said "will likely not recover to its previous condition for decades."

Responding to the South Dakota incident, Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network said,

"We fear more spills will come to bear, which is an all too frequent situation with Energy Transfer Partners pipeline projects. As such, eyes of the world are watching and will keep Dakota Access and Energy Transfer Partners accountable.

Climate Change does not care

SUBHEAD: Our opinions are immaterial to Nature. How do we learn the value of reciprocity with Nature.

By Adrian Ayres Fisher on 24 March 2017 for Ecological Gardening -
(http://www.ecologicalgardening.net/2017/03/climate-change-doesnt-care-about.html)

Image above: Bison grazing in the Black Hills of South Dakota. From original article.

As the Delphic oracle laconically informed the Spartans, Erasmus paraphrased in Latin, and someone later rendered into English, “bidden or unbidden, God is present.”

Regardless of one’s ideas about what is signified by the word “God,” the statement could be broadly interpreted to mean that the universe in general and the earth in particular function the way they do as a result of structure and laws—“God,” if you like—that are always operational, regardless of what anyone thinks about the matter.

On Earth, these operations, governed by the laws of chemistry and physics (among others), include both the behavior of the atmosphere when its greenhouse gas proportions are altered and the subsequent cascading effects on the functioning of the biosphere: our home.

No longer do I think that anyone doesn’t “believe” in climate change, particularly the money-fueled “deniers” and “skeptics.” The disastrous effects already are too much with us.

Everything is more or less as usual, only more—or less—so, sometimes unbearably more or less. There are the generally intensified floods and droughts, new warmth, and new extremes of weather, sometimes unseasonable, often deadly.

To my mind, at the terrible center of the refusal to take serious action regarding global warming stand the orphaned children of Aleppo. They are victims of a war caused in part, some say, by an unprecedented, climate-change-fueled drought.

Those children have the misfortune to live in an already climatically fragile, over-populated country and region that would benefit by people working together to help improve resilience, but that instead has become enmeshed in nihilistic, zero-sum conflict.

Even where there is not war, along the Atlantic seaboard, in the “global south,” and the American heartland—lives are becoming increasingly uneasy due to climate change’s effects.

This is true even in places where the changes continue to be denied, a stance satirized by a recent New Yorker cartoon caption: “Dad, your basement is flooded with over ten inches of left-wing hoax.”

The language we use to describe things is important. It is how we construct reality and make sense of the world.

What the deniers are doing, really, is not only denying reality, but also denying people’s ability to describe that reality and take appropriate action.

But all this has been written, tweeted, filmed, and spoken about before, on and on, while the atmosphere keeps on getting loaded up like a giant piñata full of unusual surprises to be released in the future when a few more childish hits break the structure.

The real question could be what to do about it. Actually, that’s not even a real question any longer, either.

Answers are to be had, ascending in levels of complexity from the very simple, such as that those of us who own cars could drive less and walk or bike more, to the most complex of technological, social and political structures and processes.

And this, too, has been endlessly discussed—and in some places, appropriate actions taken.

To me, there are other, related questions I would love to see at least beginning to be answered, that maybe are beginning to be answered:

How can we make important the idea of sacrifice as something desirable, in the old sense of making something sacred, of giving something up or away for the sake of continued health of the community?

How do we revalorize the idea that the community, from which we are not separate, though we are an individual species within it, is “Nature,” aka the biosphere, and every aspect and part thereof?

And finally, how do we re-learn the value of reciprocity in our relations with the natural world, our community?

These are big questions, big enough to be pondered for a lifetime and more, and I have no answers.

I’m trying to figure it out for myself, and mostly, writing helps me figure out what I think.

What would we give our lives to protect?
A recurring theme of Tana French’s brilliant series of detective novels focused on the Murder Squad of the Irish city of Dublin is the question posed by Detective Frank Mackey’s father in "Faithful Place": “What would you die to protect?”

Different characters in the series reflect on, act upon, and through events and actions come to answer some version of that question for themselves.

Sometimes they die. Sometimes they figure out who perpetrated a crime. Sometimes simply parsing the question causes a realignment of fundamental relationships in their lives.

One could ask this question in slightly less dramatic terms. Many of us in the US mostly don’t encounter the kind of life and death situations giving murder mysteries their heightened drama.

So: what are you willing to at least risk your life to save; or, what are you willing to sacrifice, to give up or give away—make sacred to god—in order to protect something dear to you? This question, really, is about love.

What is it that you love so much, is worth so much to you that you would give your life in order to make sure it survives? Sometimes the answer is so self-evident it goes without saying. For me, images of my children and husband immediately come to mind, though further reflection offers other ideas as well.

Often, though, it’s easy to avoid even considering this question, especially in a wider sense, unless forced by circumstance.

To have thought about it—or not—and to take decisions and follow a course of action based on whatever one’s answer is—or not—brings one face to face with what is most important in one’s life.

And the answer is often discovered through action rather than cogitation. Sometimes it is the threat of losing something taken for granted that forces a person—or a community—into this kind of self-discovery.

Sometimes the self-discovery leads to new discoveries about the world and about relations with it.

Often the answer is not only about family, but also about our home, our land, about that which gives us sustenance, material and spiritual.

It is in this light that I think about the water protectors who gathered last fall to defend, non-violently, the Standing Rock Sioux’ sacred sites and the Missouri River, sacred in and of itself, as all rivers are sacred, because of their life-giving benefits to all living things within their watersheds.

I do not put that title "water protectors" in quotes, as so many in the media did, marking it out as a new, not quite legitimized version of the term protesters.

To me the epithet is brilliantly accurate, emblematic of the action they were taking and sacrifices making.

They were not protesting against something, but were, in truth, protecting, in service to their personal values, and the larger set of values and beliefs that leads a person, a group, a tribe, a people, to honor the earth for what it is and what it does, to value and protect those things, perhaps intangible, that are of inestimable value, and on which their lives depend.

The water protectors were making a sacrifice, a chosen sacrifice. They were voluntarily giving up comforts, livelihoods, and certain kinds of social and legal standing while risking their lives to protect what they love, in service to a reciprocal relationship with the earth.

Sacrifice and reciprocity mean giving gifts
The word “sacrifice” is sometimes suspect nomenclature denoting a troubled, complicated history. At root, the word means making an offering—making something sacred—to god(s).

That idea has had wildly differing interpretations and applications in different times and places, ranging from the Aztecs’ habits of daily human sacrifice to the sun, to Mother Teresa giving her whole life in service to the poor, to parents making sacrifices in their own lives so their children may succeed, to the current president’s claim of having made sacrifices as he avoided duty, obligation to family and society, and integrity in his wealth-fueled quest for greater riches and adulation.

In early days, making something sacred to god often did involve killing some living thing, human or animal.

The Aztecs and Mayans may seem like poster cultures for human sacrifice, but in fact, prior to modern times, wherever humans practiced nature-centered fertility religions, the custom was pretty usual.

This includes South and Meso-American cultures, the ancient Celts, Scandinavians and other pre-Christian European cultures, and others.

The understanding that human sacrifice was not necessary to appease various gods, assure luck in a dangerous venture, or restore the fertility of the earth prior to planting season must have marked a major turning point for many cultures. (Though of course most have invented other, equally spurious religious or ideological excuses for killing people).

This realization by, among others, the ancient Greeks, Old Testament Jews, Buddhists, and North American Indian tribes, is a great invention.

The idea and practice then had room to enlarge into something less literal and transactional; it could become symbolic, as in such different religious realms as the Christian custom of communion, representing Christ’s eternal sacrifice, and certain old North American Indian rites in which pretend “arrows” were “shot” at “victims” during adoption and renewal ceremonies.

It also became personal—regardless of belief, adherents have often made—and make—physical self-sacrifices of various kinds, including living lives of poverty and service, and putting their lives on the line to carry out non-violent resistance in the face of oppression.

And sacrifice and reciprocity do exist in a gift-giving context. On a basic, transactional level, something is given in order to get something back.

A more mature person, group or culture will think in terms of reciprocity, that subtler and more complex concept that has moved beyond the transactional to include altruism, mutual benefit, and love.

We give back because we understand what great gifts we have been given, or how others have sacrificed so we might thrive, and to make the family or community stronger and healthier.

Regardless of the particular elements in a given case, reciprocity involves true relationship that benefits all involved, and respects, rather than attempts to exploit, other parties.

Our friends have us over for dinner. If we wish to continue a strong relationship, we subsequently have them back to our house, or we buy them a meal at a restaurant, or we do something else that lets them know we appreciate them and want to continue the relationship in a way that strengthens the love and support we provide one another.

By contrast, if we buy dinner from a restaurant, we are under no obligation to do so again, nor is the restaurant under any obligation to us.

The distinction might seem painfully obvious, yet our culture has confused these two kinds of relationships, and in too many cases substitutes the transactional for the reciprocal.

“Ecosystem services,” a term that has come into vogue in recent years, along with the idea of putting a dollar value to those “services,” takes us along the transactional path. I understand the concept, and why monetary terms are used, as though to appeal to capitalists in language they can understand, in an effort to save ecosystems.

To me it’s a little like calling “parental services” those things loving parents do for their children—providing love, discipline, food, clothing, housing—and then putting a dollar value to them.

Who will pay? Why do not parents get a salary—from some large corporation—for their trouble?

How does this explain the essential nature of a parent-child relationship, especially the love part?

It is mysterious and complex, the parent-child bond, and when it goes right, is a relationship not transactional, but reciprocal, in a way that grows in reciprocity and mutual benefit over time, and further, benefits the community of which the parents and children—the family—are part.

Thus our relationship with nature, with the biosphere of which we are a part. It is not true that “Nature,” that entity over there, separate from us, provides services either because somehow subjected to us, and there for the exploitation, or because we could somehow pay Nature a salary.

We ought not to say to nature, “We’re going to plant five or a thousand native trees in this city or along this rural stream bank for you, Nature, so you’d better pay us back with cleaner air and stream water” (and meanwhile, the city or farmer might expect payment from some government entity for doing this). We are all familiar with this way of looking at things.

The trees of New York City, for example, are considered to provide 22 million dollars a year worth of carbon sequestration and air pollution filtering; but that is missing the point, as might be expected, given the transactional nature of our culture’s dominant ethos.

We are misunderstanding the actual relationship and in so doing, making a grave mistake.

The crucial point is that Nature, or the biosphere as a whole (the global, interconnected community of which our species is one in possibly eight or nine million), which is subject to the laws underpinning the functioning of the entire universe, though impersonal in its actions, offers us gifts, a livelihood, if we are smart enough to recognize this; and at the same time, lays on us the obligation to give back for the benefit of the whole.

In a context of reciprocity, more questions abound: What can and should we humans offer of ourselves, or that is precious to us to ensure the continued health of the biosphere?

What actions can we take to maintain the reciprocal relationships so necessary to the proper functioning of ecosystems local, regional, continental and planetary?

How can we best use our talents, to benefit the whole enterprise, especially those, whether in kind or degree, that make us uniquely human?

Getting to choose is important
Another important thing about sacrifice and reciprocity is the element of choice. These days, a prevailing ethic seems to be that if sacrifice is to be required, better that others should be made to sacrifice for the personal gain of those who are better off.

This attitude pinpoints the difference between willing and unwilling sacrifice and the importance of the context of reciprocity. Not for nothing are the environmentally damaged places where poor people, often of color, live called “sacrifice zones.”

Not by choice, these people lose freedom, health, livelihoods and communities, family bonds, and often their lives to the grinding demands of an economic system and society run by powerful entities and people that prize transactional, exploitive relationships above all else.

There is no reciprocity involved. Nothing is being made sacred.

These places ought to be called “scapegoat zones,” in the sense of the Ursula Le Guin parable, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” And what happens when a civilization makes pretty much the whole planet a scapegoat zone?

In the question of the DAPL, the investors, the pipeline company and the mostly white citizens of Bismarck avoided making a potentially dangerous environmental tradeoff that would disadvantage their community by “sacrificing,” or scapegoating, the poorer people downriver and, with the collusion of the Federal Government, denying them the right to choose what tradeoffs and sacrifices they, themselves, were willing to make.

And none of these corporate and governmental entities were willing to give the Missouri River (including the watershed and all living denizens thereof) any “say” in the matter.

This, the water protectors turned on its head by rejecting imposed sacrifices and embracing others in alignment with their own values—and the river’s requirement that it be able to fulfill its life giving role in the landscape.

Any successful mitigation of climate change and environmental degradation on the necessary planetary scale will require a similar flip in societal values—and actions—from the merely transactional and exploitive to the reciprocal and regenerative. It will require millions, actually billions, of humans to change aspects of their lives, to become earth protectors, ecosystem protectors, and biosphere protectors.

This change will look very different in different parts of the world and will require very different kinds of sacrifices, from different groups of people, some of which actions might not be obvious or evident to the affluent westerner. It will also require certain kinds of social and environmental justice to take place that the wealthy and powerful will resist, are already resisting, mightily.

The reader will, I’m sure, immediately call to mind individuals, governments and corporations engaged in this last-ditch, retrograde resistance. Yet even they need clean air and water as a condition of life.

Besides choice, a further crucial component of sacrificial, reciprocal relationship is a social milieu in which group social values uphold the practices, and in which all members are in good standing of the group. What is defined as sacrifice will depend on attitudes, individual and societal. Long ago I gave up eating meat.

Vegetarianism, in the context of our industrialized agricultural system, is the quickest way for a relatively affluent American such as myself to lower her carbon footprint. I suppose it is a sacrifice in keeping with my social and cultural identity as an ecosystem protector. Other people have other reasons, beliefs and habits.

For some, meatless Mondays, or, for Catholics, not eating meat on Fridays, or for others, giving up meat for a certain holiday is a chosen sacrifice.

But this is a sacrifice relatively affluent people who can afford to buy meat get to decide to make. It is not a sacrifice malnourished people necessarily can choose, since it might be a condition imposed by poverty and politics, to deleterious results.

Successful vegetarianism, while better for the planet, and good for religious practice, depends nutritionally on having both enough to eat and access to plenty of other healthful foods, and these, in turn, require agency in society; for it is not true that there is not enough food to feed everyone, rather it is that poor people cannot afford to buy much food, healthy food least of all. Their economic—and social—standing bars access.

Sacrifice and reciprocity are not easy, either to talk about or to do, particularly in this America in which the idea of the public good is in such disrepute. Getting to choose means many won’t choose. For one thing, there is required an acknowledgement of privilege, and the need for imposing restraint on a comfortable way of life, a step many are not prepared to take.

For example, climate scientists are among the privileged members of society, and among the global top ten percent of carbon emitters, in part owing to their propensity to fly around the globe attending conferences.

Only recently have a few come out and publicly stated that they, themselves, perhaps ought to be part of the solution in a material way. It has been estimated that if the top ten percent of carbon emitters, including elite climate scientists, Davos attendees, members of the US House and Senate, billionaire cabinet members and all the others, including your average frequent fliers and, not least, the denizens of any middle to upper-middle class American enclave, were to reduce their personal carbon footprints to the European average, planetary carbon emissions would be reduced by as much as 30%.

What kinds of “sacrifices” would this entail?

Unfortunately, at the moment, it seems that having enough wealth means never having to exercise carbon restraint, or if one does, it means one’s house can be that much larger. Al Gore could have avoided a lot of trolling had he opted to build a smaller house.

Peter Thiel and certain other members of the global financial elite are in a position to benefit the public good enormously, yet they abdicate any idea of social and biosphere-related reciprocity by indulging apocalyptic fantasies with real-world bolt holes.

The people and the bison
Recently, I went to see a film, “Little Wound’s Warriors,” by a colleague of mine. It is composed of a series of interviews with residents of Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, a curtailed remnant of the homeland of the Lakota people.

The main interviewees were the high school students at Little Wound School, which educates grades kindergarten through high school. An affecting portrait is built up, as they, and others from the community, describe life on “the rez” and their efforts to strengthen the community after a series of suicides by young people.

The miserable history of the US Government’s genocide and double-dealing, and Anglo culture’s attempt to obliterate native culture by actively suppressing language, religion, and ways of life, is not a matter for history books for the Lakota, who are living with both the direct experience and its pervasive after effects.

While honest in its portrayal of the devastation caused by poverty, drug and alcohol use, there was hope in social engagement and a renewed emphasis on traditional culture. Besides the renewal of ceremonies, beliefs and the study of Lakota language, the people have embarked on the project of bringing bison back to the reservation.

This last is significant. George Apple, a leader at Pine Ridge, was there with several others for a post-film panel discussion, during which the subject of the tribe’s relationship with the bison came up. He said the Lakota have always believed that the strength of the tribe is dependent on the strength of the bison.

The Lakota people are bonded with the buffalo in a relationship of deep reciprocity. As the fortunes of the bison herds go, so go the fortunes of the tribe.

Afterwards I asked George to explain more, and he told me this creation story: long ago, before time began, the people were living underground. Life was good, and they lived happy lives.

At some point they were tricked—how, he didn’t say—into emerging into the land we now call America. The people promptly began to suffer, because they didn’t know how to live here where life is so hard. Not knowing how to get along, they were starving, and had no homes or way of living.

The buffalo came to them and taught them, and in fact sacrificed themselves so the people could live.

The people learned ceremony, to help them stay healthy and keep in good agreement with the spirits—the forces—that govern the world, and they learned how to use every part of the bison—meat for food, hides for warmth and shelter, and bones from which to craft tools. No part was wasted. George then told me that so close is the physical and spiritual bond that Lakota people say that they and the buffalo share DNA.

Now, the herd is increasing. As part of tribal renewal, they have a buffalo hunt each year, during which one animal is killed and the young people are taught the old ways regarding the bison and its uses.

A lesson I drew from that story is that with reciprocity comes responsibility. In the terms of the story, the buffalo sacrifice themselves, but the terms of that sacrifice entail the human responsibility to live on the land so that the bison might thrive, and this requires ceremony, as well as practical actions in the material world, such as careful stewardship —and sacrifice of our own greed, arrogance and lawless behavior vis a vis what we call the natural world.

Giving our lives, rebuilding relationships
Sacrifice is another word for giving. We give so that all might benefit. We give to improve the public good. We give because we are given so much and want to continue a relationship of reciprocity. We talk about helping biodiversity increase, about creating habitat for wildlife, for bees and butterflies, for birds.

When we do that, aren’t we also creating habitat for humans? What do we most need to thrive?

Our and other living things’ habitat needs really are one and the same. Saving butterflies and bumblebees, mangroves and seagrass, mountain lions and prairie chickens—and bison—means saving ourselves.

Humans need what all other living things need, including space to live according to the ways of our species, appropriate food, clean water, clean air and a stable climate regime.

If we only focus on what we imagine to be strictly human needs without cultivating reciprocity, there is no productive way forward.

All other species suffer the consequences of over-success and overpopulation, and endure natural correction in one way or another, often tailored to the particular way the species inhabits its niche. Too many deer browsing a woodland understory in the absence of predators will encounter certain starvation, disease and death until some kind of equilibrium is achieved.

A virus too efficient at killing its host will itself will die out over time.

You could say climate change is our own special corrective, tailored to the particular traits that mark us as the species Homo sapiens.

Unfortunately, every other living thing—all our plant and animal relations—will be caught up in the dreadful consequences.

“Nature,” as we personify the planetary biosphere, is not kind, nor merciful (nor malevolent); but nature will allow our species to live and thrive if we practice reciprocity, which, among species, we are uniquely able to consciously do.

In the long run, we do not get to bargain, nor to we get to choose the conditions for continued survival. We do get to choose to find ways to live in accordance with the laws nature sets.

Millions of people are already engaged in this work, in multiple realms, from the religious to the most steadfastly pragmatic.

At present, ecocentric ideas are reappearing in some religions, monotheistic or not, without also bringing back the idea that we must kill some people in order to ensure the earth’s continued health and fertility.

Old, nature-centered religions have been resurrected, morphed into gentler versions of their blood-soaked prior incarnations.

And quite a few Americans who do not subscribe to any religion, who may in fact not merely be secular but actively anti-religion because they adhere so strongly to the ideology and methods of scientific materialism, nevertheless have embraced a conservation ethic because that is where the weight of evidence moves the scale.

Though there has been progress—world emissions have been flat for three years now—help is mostly not coming from the powerful and rich, the politically connected.

There is no Deus ex Machina. It is up to all of us to do what can and must be done. There is hope, but the time is growing short.
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Lessons from Standing Rock

SUBHEAD: The North Dakota camp may have been evicted but the movement hasn’t lost.

By Alnoor Ladha on 8 March 2017 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/08/memory-fire-and-hope-five-lessons-standing-rock)

Image above: Burning of NoDAPL Standing Rock village at site of Dakota Access Pipeline protests. From original article.

Here are five lessons activists around the world can learn from the water protectors.

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." —Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

On February 22, 2017, water protectors at the Oceti Sakowin camp, the primary camp of Standing Rock, were evicted by the Army Corps of Engineers in a military style takeover. A peaceful resistance that began with a sacred fire lit on April 1, 2016, ended in a blaze as some of the protectors, in a final act of defiance, set some of the camp’s structures on fire.

The millions of people around the world who have stood in solidarity and empathy with Standing Rock now stand in disbelief and grief, but the forced closure of the encampment is simply the latest chapter in a violent, 500-year-old history of colonization against the First Nations. It is also the latest chapter in the battle between an extractive capitalist model and the possibility of a post-capitalist world.

Of course, the ongoing struggle will not go down in the flames at Oceti Sakowin. We should take this opportunity to remember the enduring lessons of this movement, and prepare ourselves for what is to come next.

1. There is a global convergence of movements
When I visited Standing Rock in October 2016, it struck me that this was the most diverse political gathering I’d ever seen.

Over 300 North American tribes had came together for the first time in history. Standing alongside them were over 100 Indigenous communities from all over the globe. A contingent from the Sami people, the Indigenous peoples of Scandinavia, had traversed the Atlantic to show their support the day I arrived. They were joined by black bloc anarchists, New Age spiritualists, traditional environmentalists, union organizers and ordinary Americans who have never attended a protest.

The media has characterized Standing Rock as a one-off protest against a pipeline in North Dakota.

But the reality is that the various movements from around the world including the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the Pink Tide in Latin America, the landless people’s movement from India, the anti-austerity movement in Europe, the global Occupy movement, and the countless "a wakenings" spreading across the African continent are uniting as expressions of the same impulse: a belief that the neoliberal capitalist system has failed the majority of humanity and a new world is emerging.

2. A more holistic activism is emerging
With its sacred fire, daily prayers and water ceremonies, Standing Rock has helped to reanimate the sacred aspect of activism. We are seeing a shift from resistance to resistance and renewal simultaneously. Progressive movements which once internalized the Neitzchean dictum that "God is dead" are now evolving their positions.

As the anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey states:

"As Capital triumphs over the Social as against all spiritualities, spirituality itself finds itself realigned with revolution^."There is a shift to embracing a more holistic activism that transcends traditional Cartesian duality and calls upon greater forces. Cedric Goodhouse, an elder at Standing Rock put it simply, saying: "We are governed by prayer."

The particular ways in which Standing Rock embodied non-violent direct action has given many activists a new faith in the possibility of a more sacred activism. I stood with dozens of water protectors when they prayed on water in front of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) engineers while they were laying down oil pipeline.

The very act of seeing Indigenous elders praying on water said more about the implications of an extractive pipeline than any linear argument. They dropped their tools not only because they wanted to avoid confrontation, but because somehow they understood they were on the wrong side of the moral calculus.

The author Charles Eisenstein reminds us of a powerful insight about sacred activism that has been embodied in Standing Rock: "We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate 'the deplorables.'

We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: 'Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.'

If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty."

3. Occupation of space is a critical tactic
Even before Occupy there has been a renaissance in the political understanding of the value of place and space. The battlegrounds between the corporate/state nexus and people’s movements are physical realms: the places where resources are being extracted, water is being polluted and capitalist interests are expanding through what Marxist geographer, David Harvey, calls “accumulation by dispossession.”

The occupation of space creates a physical spectacle that forces the corporate media to tell the stories it would otherwise like to ignore. It creates networks of solidarity and deep relationships that span beyond the time and space of the occupation. It creates inter-generational transfers-of-knowledge, both politically and spiritually. It weaves the connective tissue for the continued resistance against corporate (and other imperialist) power.

Standing Rock will be remembered by the thousands of activists who braved blizzards to sleep in tipis, who cooked food together in the communal kitchens, and celebrated in song and ceremony with tribal elders around the sacred fire.

As the activist Reverend Billy Talen recently stated: "Zuccotti Park and the stretch of sidewalk in front of the Ferguson police department and the meadow near the Sacred Stone… these three places are lived in.

Here is where activists cared for each other and shared food, clothing and medicine. The force that upsets entrenched power the most is this compassionate living, this community in plain sight."

4. We are Nature protecting itself
Part of the on-going colonial legacy of North America is a battle between the mute materialism of capitalism that seeks to dominate nature and the symbiotic approach of Indigenous thought that sees Nature as alive, and sees human beings as playing a central role in the evolution and stewardship of the broader whole. It is this very worldview that rationalists derisively call “animist” and that continues to confound the utility maximization ideals of modern thought.

Indigenous lands are increasingly going to be a battleground not only for resource extraction, but ideology itself. Although Indigenous peoples represent about 4% of the world’s population they live on and protect 22% of the Earth’s surface. Critically, the land inhabited by Indigenous peoples holds the remaining 80% of the planet’s biodiversity.

It is no coincidence that ETP moved away from its early proposal to have the DAPL project cross the Missouri river just north of Bismarck, a primarily white city, to the Standing Rock area inhabited by the Sioux tribe.

During COP 21 in Paris, Indigenous youth groups carried banners that read: "We are Nature protecting itself." The idea that we are not protestors, but protectors of the sacred is a central theme that resonates throughout the world.

In a powerful article on the Sacred Stone blog, the camp’s founder Ladonna Bravebull Allard said: "This movement is not just about a pipeline. We are not fighting for a reroute, or a better process in the white man’s courts.

We are fighting for our rights as the Indigenous peoples of this land; we are fighting for our liberation, and the liberation of Unci Maka, Mother Earth. We want every last oil and gas pipe removed from her body. We want healing. We want clean water. We want to determine our own future."

These ideals are not just Indigenous ideals; they are ideals linked with our very survival as a species. In a world of catastrophic climate change, protecting the sacred must be the mantra of all activists and concerned citizens.

5. There is a common antagonist
Although the various social movements around the world are portrayed as separate incidents that are particular to their local context, there is a growing awareness among movements themselves that we are uniting against the same antagonist: the deadly logic of late-stage capitalism.

Whether one is fighting for land rights in India or tax justice in Kenya or to stop a pipeline in the US, the ‘enemy’ is the same: a cannibalistic global economy that requires perpetual extraction, violence, oppression, in the service of GDP growth, which in turn, benefits a tiny elite at the expense of the world’s majority.

There is a Algonquin word, wetiko, that refers to a cannibalistic spirit that consumes the heart of man. It was a common term used when the First Nations of North America initially interacted with the Western European colonialists.

The spirit of wetiko, like many memetic thought-forms, has mutated and evolved, and has now become the animating force of the global capitalist system. We are not just fighting a pipeline; we are fighting the wetiko spirit that has taken hold of our planet like invisible architecture.

What Standing Rock achieved so beautifully was to provide this broader context, to ladder up a local struggle for clean water to the struggle against the forces of wetiko itself.

Wetiko is inherently anti-life. And what we are all fighting for is a new system that recognizes our interdependence with the Earth and with each other, and that allows our highest selves to flourish.

The sacred fire at Standing Rock may now be smoldering but it’s reverberations are only beginning to be felt. As Julian Brave NoiseCat poignantly states in his reflections on the impact of this historical movement:

"They have lit a fire on the prairie in the heart of America as a symbol of their resistance, a movement that stands for something that is undoubtedly right: water that sustains life, and land that gave birth to people."

This is the enduring power of Standing Rock. It has created inextinguishable hope, activated our historical memory and created new forms of power by the profound act of starting a global movement from a single sacred fire.

The fires of Standing Rock are illuminating the transition that lies ahead and the new society that is emerging from its ashes.

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Standing Rock will not go away

SUBHEAD: Water Protectors hope supporters on March 10th will demonstrate in Washington D.C.

By Mark Trahant on 24 February 2017 for Yes Magazine -
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/water-is-life-the-story-of-standing-rock-wont-go-away-20170224)

Image above: Veterans, water protectors and the independent media facing riot police. Photo by Rob Wilson. From original article.

The Dakota Access pipeline is set and oil will flow. But this is not the only fight about water, and Standing Rock is only one chapter somewhere in the middle of a long story.

Every day I write rhymes on Twitter. I get a kick out of reducing complicated ideas and events down to 140 characters. So yesterday I wrote:

Powers That Be think it’s the endDAPL will now have much money to spendBut Standing Rock is a rally cryRebalance our world before we die

And that is the story I want to tell. Standing Rock is only one chapter somewhere in the middle of a long story.

It’s true that North Dakota used the power of the state this week to march into the camps along the Missouri River and round up the remaining water protectors.

But think about that story: A few dozen people were arrested at camps where more than 10,000 people once said no to the Dakota Access pipeline. That people power did not evaporate. Even today more people, tens of thousands, perhaps millions, are still a part of that effort via social media and through direct action.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its allies have been repeating the same story for more than a year: Mni wiconi (water is life). This is a narrative that the state of North Dakota, the pipeline company, and the oil industry could not counter, despite spending millions of dollars and advancing into Great Sioux treaty lands with a law enforcement army.

The chief executive of the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline told investors on Thursday that he “underestimated the power of social media,” where stories spread so rapidly. According to Bloomberg News, Kelcy Warren complained:

“There was no way we can defend ourselves.”

Actually, there was a way: Many energy companies have figured out that it’s far better to work with communities than to roll over them.

The point is that the company and the state lost the narrative. But then, “lost” might not be the right word. The company was in a rush to build and North Dakota made the story more compelling by acting against its own interest.

Think about what story we’d be telling now if the North Dakota governor spent the first few weeks listening to the community and exploring alternatives. No one would have turned the page to see what happened next. No drama.

Instead, the county sheriff took center stage playing a villain. In August, Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier arrested Standing Rock Chairman David Archambault II and the plot raced ahead to a military occupation, a company line to defend, and a global audience via social media. Lots of drama.

But this is not the only fight about water. There are now hundreds of scenes spread across North America.

The protection of water, the rebalancing of the world, now has a symbol and a memory to carry that story forward. Every pipeline project that’s planned across North America will have to defend itself in every community, on social media, and with investors.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe hopes supporters on March 10th 2017 will march and pray in Washington, D.C. The tribe asks people to “rise in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of the world whose rights protect Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth) for the future generations of all.” I think people will go. And by the thousands. Standing Rock is the call to action.

The White House tried to rewrite the story Thursday. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at the daily briefing that the White House is “constantly in touch with” the Standing Rock Sioux. The idea here, which has been brewing for a while, is to cast the tribe as a partner of the state.

The tribe immediately called out that statement as false. Archambault said in a news release: “We repeatedly asked for meetings with the Trump administration, but never received one until the day they notified Congress that they were issuing the easement.

I was on a plane to Washington, D.C., when the easement was issued. It was an insult to me and to the Tribe. I cancelled the meeting upon hearing this news. We have since filed a lawsuit for the immoral and illegal issuance of the easement and suspension of the environmental impact study.”

This lie from the White House is revealing: The Trump administration (and its allies in the oil industry and North Dakota) understands that this story is not over. They want their narrative back.

And that’s not going to happen. How could it? We all know water is life.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Tribes divest DAPL bankers 2/13/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps okays DAPL easement 2/8/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump orders go on DAPL EIS 2/3/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump orders shale oil pipelines 1/24/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Missile launcher at Standing Rock 1/19/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Lockdown at Trans-Pecos Pipeline 1/10/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock has changed us 12/9/16
Ea O Ka Aina: As Standing Rock celebrates... 12/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps denies DAPL easement 12/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: My Whole Heart is With You 12/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Loving Containment of Courage 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning is Near 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock has changed us 12/9/16
Ea O Ka Aina: As Standing Rock celebrates... 12/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps denies easement 12/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: My Whole Heart is With You 12/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Loving Containment of Courage 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning is Near 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds to shutdown NoDAPL Camp 11/25/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL people are going to die 11/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL 11/22/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16

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Ea O Ka Aina

'Necessity Defense' to save Earth

Louisiana snubs TigerSwan

Waialeale Water Lease

First DAPL Spill Reported

Climate Change does not care

Lessons from Standing Rock

Standing Rock will not go away

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