[Vision2020] 9-28-16 billmoyers.com: "Standing Firm at Standing Rock: Why the Struggle is Bigger Than One Pipeline"

[Ted Moffett]

http://billmoyers.com/story/standing-firm-standing-rock-pipeline-protesters-will-not-moved/

This article by *Sarah Jaffe *touches on a number of critical issues
coalescing with the gathering of *protectors (not protestors)* at the
Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

Though perhaps not quite explicitly stated in the article, the
ideology underlying the colonization of North America that Nature should be
dominated, exploited and bent to the will of human activity, is causally
related to the domination, exploitation and bending of Native peoples by
the colonizers.  Thus to protect the sacred water and land from the impacts
of fossil fuel development, this extreme exploitation and domination of
Nature, is to both reclaim the indigenous North American spirit as it
simultaneously is saving the biosphere from the destruction of Nature
globally associated with fossil fuels.

This is a global movement, as the quotes from the article below indicate.
I am reminded of the concept of "Blockadia" from Naomi Klein's superb book
"This Changes Everything," the activism in many nations to block fossil
fuel development.

In her words:
9. Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors

"Blockadia is not a specific location on a map but rather a roving
transnational conflict zone that is cropping up with increasing frequency
and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill
…" (294-95)
---------------------------------

To Dave Archambault II, the tribal chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, the
struggle — and the response from indigenous people — is global. He greeted
reporters Sept. 14 alongside the delegation from Ecuador. “We all have
similar struggles, where this dependency this world has on fossil fuels is
affecting and damaging Mother Earth,” he said. “It is the indigenous
peoples who are standing up with that spirit, that awakening of that spirit
and saying, ‘It is time to protect what is precious to us.'” Nina Gualinga,
one of the Ecuadorian visitors, noted, “The world needs indigenous people.
The statistics say that we are 4 percent of the world’s population, but we
are protecting more than 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity.”
---------------------------------
On the 150th anniversary of that treaty, Jan. 25, 2013, those nations,
along with the Oglala and Ponca, signed the International Treaty to Protect
the Sacred from Tar Sands Projects
<http://www.ienearth.org/international-treaty-to-protect-the-sacred-from-tar-sands-projects/>.
“In that treaty, we declared that forevermore we would be allies to stop
this extractive move to destroy Mother Earth from the Boreal forest down to
the Gulf,” she said. Since that time, other nations have joined, and the
treaty was renewed with prayers and a donation to the Sacred Stone camp.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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