PUTNEY — I was horrified in early September to hear of the destruction of cultural heritage sites in the United States and attacks on peaceful protestors.
That was when the construction company started bulldozing burial grounds and historic sites of the Sioux in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline. And the private security firm unleashed dogs and used pepper spray on children, women, and men.
This kind of horrific attack was repeated just last week - this time, with mace and fire hoses in the sub-freezing temperatures, causing people serious injury and hypothermia and the need for hospitalization.
Unfortunately, this disregard of a whole group of people and their culture has been happening for hundreds of years. The current attack is from a huge company whose leaders want to build a pipeline to carry crude oil through the land and under the water that hydrates people.
The indigenous peoples of the Americas have endured hundreds of years of theft of their lands and resources, genocide of their people, blatant attacks on their religion and culture, and repeated broken promises and broken treaties from those of us who were the immigrants throughout these past four centuries.
The indigenous people have not given up. Centered on the area of the Standing Rock Sioux, thousands of people from hundreds of tribes throughout the Americas and with non-indigenous allies have joined to protect the water.
The water is precious, and because liquid flows, contamination in some small area can spread quickly to become a huge disaster all the way down the river.
I want to publicly thank these people for taking this stand of being water protectors for all of us - and for reminding us once again that we are all responsible to pass on an Earth that sustains life for future generations.
We need to consider how to respect all people and their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and how to keep the world sustainable for them. The future based on extracting more fossil fuels and wrecking more environmental disaster - both through the direct contamination of spills and through increased carbon-dioxide emissions, which will lead to wilder climate change - is not one that results in humans having a good life.
The focus of companies on making profits and being treated as if they are people with “rights” - rather than business entities that ensure that all actual people have rights - does not lead to humans having a good life or a sustainable future.
Forgetting (or ignoring) the genocidal history of the United States and colluding with making the indigenous people invisible rather than honoring them and making them central in our nation - their nations - does not lead to a good and sustainable life for any of us.
We need to consider all of this as we live our personal lives to reduce harm to humans and the Earth.
As we do so, we must reduce our use of fossil fuels and raise awareness and our voices to make sure the water protectors gathered in North Dakota are heard, are respected, and are safe - and to prevent the pipeline from being built through their area.