Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Environmental Justice by Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys

Abstract

Reviewed by: Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Environmental Justice by Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys Claire Patton Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys, Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Environmental Justice. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. xii, 352 pp. $24.95 (paper). For good reason, historians are fond of quoting William Faulkner's famous observation from his novel Requiem for a Nun, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Few recent events demonstrate the ability of the past to motivate action in the present than the 2014–17 opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys's Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Environmental Justice follows the stories of four Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara (MHA) Nation women and their work protesting the pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. This work shows that the past is inextricably tied to the present and that the legacies of settler colonialism still present themselves in the twenty-first century. Most importantly, this book shows how history creates the present we live in and that Native peoples remain active in confronting threats to their land. This book situates the protests against the pipeline in a long tradition of Indigenous activism and a continuation of the American Indian Movement of the late twentieth century. Although the pipeline did not cross current Standing Rock Reservation boundaries, it did go through land that historically belonged to the Lakota, as confirmed by the United States in the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. The United States subsequently annexed much of this land, creating five separate reservations, including [End Page 208] Standing Rock, by 1890. Moreover, the pipeline went under the primary water source for the reservation, a direct threat to the people living there. The book follows the stories of Lisa DeVille, Jasilyn Charger, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, and Kandi White, with a separate section dedicated to each of these women. The book moves in a linear fashion, beginning in the early 2010s before culminating with the major public protests of 2016–17. Each section, in addition to telling the story of its respective activist, describes a portion of the protest. The primary connection with Native American history is found in the title of the book, the story of the black snake. According to Lakota tradition, a black snake would enter their land bringing death and destruction, starting with the water supply (90). It is a brilliant connection which could have elevated the book's storytelling. Unfortunately, Todrys missed this opportunity. The story comes too late in the book to be an effective metaphor; retelling this legend at the beginning and alluding to it again in at later chapters would have made for a more cohesive narrative. Additionally, the separation of the book into four sections is not a terribly effective technique. The overall story seems to stand without the women as the main framework, and each section ends up discussing all four women anyway. The book would have worked better if the separations had been delineated temporally, allowing the author to move between the four women more freely. One stumbling block the uninitiated reader must overcome is understanding how companies produce oil. The book might have alleviated this by containing a brief section on how companies produce oil and why there were so many spills with this pipeline. This would have helped reinforce the danger that life on the reservation was, and is, in. A timeline would also have helped clarify the sequence of events. As a final critique, it would have been fascinating to look at Indigenous water rights activism through the lens of borderlands studies. This field explores how different entities interact at their borders and how events on one side of the border affect the other side. Perhaps future historians can continue this scholarship through that framework. Todrys fully acknowledges the story is a sad one and wonders what the impact of the pipeline will be many years from now. Readers wanting a more hopeful ending will be disappointed. The activists did not achieve their end; the pipeline still ran. In the end, Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline...