“The fight is still on in the courtroom and we’re also about to launch a sovereignty campaign, a capital campaign because we are not prepared for an oil spill right now. If the pipeline were to break today, we would have about 4 days or 5 days of stored water, we could shut off our valves but after that point, we’re buying water” says Standing Rock Sioux Tribe member Chase Iron Eyes.
Iron Eyes, a former United States Congressional candidate, award winning journalist Jenni Monet and Indigenous activist Clayton Thomas Muller join host Dennis Ward on InFocus to discuss the legacy of the #NoDAPL movement and the gathering in Standing Rock, one year after the camps were closed by law enforcement.
“Standing Rock changed the world and we as members of our Nations and members of the global movement for Indigenous rights and climate justice owe a debt to everybody who put their bodies on the line. In the same way that we owe a debt to those who participated in Oka, Gustafsen Lake, in Wounded Knee, in the longest walk” says Indigenous activist and environmentalist, Clayton Thomas Muller.
The #NoDAPL movement has now spread to fight other pipeline projects like Enbridge’s Line 3, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion and Energy Transfer Partner’s Bayou pipeline.
According to Thomas Muller, “Indigenous peoples are communicating, we’re sharing resources, we are escalating against this neo-colonial form of colonization in our homelands brought to us by energy corporations working in collusion with governments.”
The panel also discusses the role of private contractors, the millions of dollars raised in the name of Standing Rock and the historical trauma that brought many people to the camp.
“I think that what Standing Rock represents today for a lot of people too is a way to come heal. It was a way for some people to arrive and get sober, a way for some people to connect to perhaps a sense of family that perhaps that never existed from where the communities are, it was so much bigger than an environmentally lead movement in which it started as” says Jenni Monet.
APTN Investigates will have a new episode “After Standing Rock” premiering on March 30th.
