The Meaning of Standing Rock: On Imperialism, Indigeneity, Industrialization, and Imagination

Abstract

The Meaning of Standing RockOn Imperialism, Indigeneity, Industrialization, and Imagination Sebastian Felix Braun (bio) Our History Is Our Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. By Nick Estes. London: Verso, 2019. 310 pp. Maps, photographs, notes, index. $26.95 hardcover. Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Environmental Justice. By Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. x + 311 pp. Map, photographs, notes, index. $24.95 paper. Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the Story of Occupation, Sovereignty, and the Fight for Sacred Lands. By Jacqueline Keeler. Salt Lake City: Torrey House Press, 2021. 236 pp. $19.95 paper. Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement. Edited by Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. i + 420 pp. Maps, photographs, notes, references, index. $100.00 hardcover; $24.95 paper. "Standing Rock" became a trope in 2016. People stood with Standing Rock, went to Standing Rock, talked about Standing Rock, watched Standing Rock, fought for Standing Rock, wept for Standing Rock, and collected money for Standing Rock. Before that, Standing Rock was a place: the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, home to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Interrupting the border between North and South Dakota, its communities are mostly Lakota (Hunkpapa) and Dakota (Yanktonai) speakers. One of the Ihanktowanna communities is Cannon Ball, the northernmost community. It is not far from there that "Standing Rock" originated in 2016. Apart from its real presence in camps on and off the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, "Standing Rock" existed mostly, however, in cyberspace. This community reached out through social media and the internet, and eventually spanned the globe. As it expanded, it also changed. Many people who stood with Standing Rock had never heard of the actual place. Standing Rock became a feeling, a statement in its own right, a symbol, a manifesto. The reason for all the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at this point was the Corps of Engineers' responsibility to issue a permit for the pipeline to cross the Missouri River, now Lake Oahe. Since 2016, articles and books have been written, documentaries screened, and lawsuits filed over the meaning of Standing Rock. Here, I will discuss four of these books. Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys's Black Snake depicts the events surrounding the protests [End Page 147] from the perspective and through the experiences of four women, all involved in leadership roles. It sees Standing Rock as a fight for environmental justice and includes sections on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, further north on the Missouri River. Fort Berthold was, in 2016, reaping rewards and negative consequences from the Bakken oil boom. Jaqueline Keeler's Standoff compares Standing Rock to another occupation, the takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Both spoke out against the federal government, although one was inspired by Native connections with the land and the other by antigovernmental militia philosophy. Nick Estes's Our History Is Our Future attempts to put Standing Rock into a continuous line of Indigenous resistance. From this perspective, it is simply the latest incident in an ongoing conflict between two incompatible societies—the Oceti Sakowin on one side, standing for Indigeneity, and the United States on the other, standing for settler colonialism. Finally, Standing with Standing Rock is an edited volume combining thoughts about and surrounding Standing Rock. It reflects a variety of different perspectives about "Standing Rock," its contributors allowed to speak for themselves. The trope of Standing Rock becomes perhaps most obvious with the realization that none of the books are truly about the protests at the Cannonball River. While some of them go into some detail about the actual events—Black Snake most fully—they all use the protests as an example for larger issues and in turn engage in meaning making for the protests from these different perspectives. This is not a coincidence. Like the events at the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, which most commentators about Standing Rock use for comparison, after the camps were dismantled there seems to be no real lasting consequence. To prevent the hardships and violence people endured from being meaningless, they...