After #NoDAPL, ‘Water Protector’ Movement Continues With Resistance Camps Across the U.S. (Video)
Native American activist Raymond Kingfisher talks about the work ahead.
Native American activist Raymond Kingfisher. (Truthdig / Facebook)
The main Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) camps at Standing Rock in North Dakota are history. But the battle to save the environment continues.
Native American activist Raymond Kingfisher sat down with Truthdig correspondent Donald Kaufman to discuss the future of the “water protector” movement that started with #NoDAPL.
Kingfisher said:
One of the things that we accomplished at Standing Rock was that we became aware of all of the water issues. We learned a lot of things about the environment and the laws that were pertaining to treaty rights and how to do civil disobedience. So it was a learning process. From all that education, we learned about solar energy. We learned a lot of new things that we never learned about, being native.
So now, as the movement goes, since we all were forcefully moved out of camp, a lot of the groups, different groups are branching off and going out and making different camps throughout the United States. These camps are resistance camps that are resisting against pipelines, corporations, oil, fossil fuel corporations, all these different industries that are ruining our water and polluting our land.
Watch the entire interview with Kingfisher below.
Science Alert reports that last week, Energy Transfer Partners — the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline — had two spills connected with its latest project, the Rover pipeline. Millions of gallons of drilling fluid leaked into Ohio wetlands as a result.
READ: Standing Rock: Last Stand at Oceti Sakowin Camp
On Saturday, Earth Day, a film called “Awake: A Dream From Standing Rock” will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Reuters reports.
“Our camp is gone, but our spirit is not broken,” Sioux member Floris Bull White, one of the filmmakers, told Reuters. “Will you wake up and join us?”
Read more about the the film.
—Posted by Eric Ortiz
Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
Activism
Newly released documents show the FBI was monitoring anti-Keystone protesters much earlier than previously known. Young Native activists were among its first targets.
Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s book is a primer on the Native American environmental movement and a chronicle of fighting government and corporate power.
The New York congresswoman has been especially critical of the bank's financing of human rights abuses and environmental disasters.
Ear to the Ground
Hundreds of activists were arrested for civil disobedience, but the movement was a source of purpose and hope for many of them.
In the United States—the richest country in human history—the 140 million people who live on or below the poverty line are screaming for justice.
Despite what we may hear from the media, Republicans and Democrats themselves, the Democratic Party is not "the left" but just another slave to the corporate capitalism that is leading us to destruction.