The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

In 1992, the US federal government canceled plans to celebrate the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in North America after Indigenous activists threatened to stage a mass protest. Two years later, Berkeley, California, renamed Columbus Day “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Though the activism that spurred a reassessment of Columbus’s legacy remains strong, many Indigenous people have turned inwards. One way of doing this has been through the study of Indigenous languages. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Languages Act, which provided funding for instruction in Indigenous languages. This was one way to “undo the damage done by residential boarding schools” (430), where children were forbidden from speaking in their native tongues.

The 2013 revision of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act was also significant for Indigenous communities. Tribal courts now had power “to charge and prosecute non-Natives who raped or assaulted Native women on Native land” (430). Most Indigenous women are married or partnered to non-Indigenous men and are usually assaulted in or near their residences.

Others have found more mundane ways of encouraging self-preservation. Treuer uses the anecdote of a young Ojibwe and Creek woman named Sarah who started a fitness group on her reservation, helping fellow tribal members reassess their eating habits and, particularly, their relationship with alcohol.

The 2016 protest at Standing Rock Reservation to contest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline was the culmination of Indigenous efforts to fight for self-preservation and political power. The pipeline, which was constructed and now carries over 400,000 barrels of oil from northern North Dakota to Illinois, became an Indigenous problem when it was designed to run across the Missouri River, “just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation” (431). The protest was the largest gathering of Indigenous people since they formed the tribal armies that defeated the US Cavalry at Little Bighorn.

In court, the tribe argued that the pipeline would destroy sacred burial sites, saying that it would violate the National Historic Preservation Act. However, the pipeline also posed a significant danger to drinking water. Though the protestors were non-violent for the duration of the stand-off, private security teams sent attack dogs after protestors, and the government “decried how the Indians were trespassing on private property” (435).

Though the protest did not halt the construction of the pipeline, it changed how Indigenous communities staged protests. There was no single leader or group of leaders who determined the action. Instead, activists, individuals, and tribal governments banded together. Many of the leaders on the ground were also women. The protest reasserted that Indigenous communities are a plurality with different ways of organizing. The event also underscored that Indigenous communities were on every side of the fight. There were not only Indigenous protestors, but also Indigenous people working for the oil companies who wanted the pipeline. There were Indigenous people who worked within the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulated its construction of the pipeline, too.