The Water Protectors at Standing Rock: Survivance Strategies for Gendered Relinking

Abstract

Violence against Indigenous individuals and the land is exacerbated by the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Such violence stems from and is sustained by structures of settler colonialism. Analyzing RISE (2017), a documentary television series which followed the Standing Rock occupation, I argue the Water Protectors enacted their inherent sovereignty through strategies of survivance that delinked from settler colonialism and provided gendered relinking to Indigenous knowledges. The Water Protectors’ decolonial talk presented embodied messages of Indigenous survivance that highlighted their agency to resist settler colonialism. By asserting their active decolonial presence, the Water Protectors challenged settler colonial gendered violence, constructing new realities where Indigenous peoples and the earth are decolonized.