Youth at the #NoDAPL encampment in North Dakota. Photo by Joe Brusky / Overpass Light Brigade
Independent journalist Mary Annette Pember is heading to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota to cover the #NoDAPL movement. She's bringing along a young family member for the journey:
On the eve that Maangozit, Loon’s Foot, had definitely decided to cut off his braid, I received word that I would be traveling to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Editors requested that I report on actions such as the Oceti Sakowin camp that has been established to oppose construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near the tribe’s home. When he heard there was camping and other Indian boys, he asked to join me. I could see visions of long Lego parties in our tent and eating forbidden sugar cereal, like Coco Pebbles, out of the box dancing in his head. We talked and thought about it. I told him the history of the struggle there, how folks wanted to keep their water and land safe for their families, and how the proposed pipeline route may be through sacred land. I could almost hear the tiny wheels going round in his 12-year-old boy mind. They seemed to slow as he considered the implications. “Maybe I should keep my braid for them,” he offered. I almost cried. The braid represents so much more than mere hair in our family. Maangozit had reluctantly agreed to keep his braid until after ceremony this past summer. Not an easy decision here in a mostly white suburb where Indians are thought to be part of a long-dead history. Fodder for scouts, Halloween and Thanksgiving, they are part of a distant Hollywood make-believe world. Few people here have knowingly met any Native people and therefore believe we are, like the passenger pigeon, extinct.Read More:
Mary Annette Pember: How Standing Rock Helped Maangozit Keep His Braid (Indian Country Today 9/23) D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals #NoDAPL Documents:
Injunction Blocking Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline (September 16, 2016)
Order Setting October 5 Hearing (September 21, 2016)
Order Allocating Oral Argument Time (September 21, 2016)
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