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With a copper pail of water in one hand and a staff in the other, Josephine Mandamin, an Anishabaabewe grandmother took on a sacred walk, traversing over 10,900 miles around each of the Great Lakes. She is known as the “Water Walker.”
According to the Michigan Sea Grant, the Great Lakes shoreline is equal to almost 44% of the circumference of the earth. “When you see someone walking with a pail of water, you wonder, where is she going with that water.”
So the message is, water is very precious, and I will go to any lengths to and direction to carry the water to the people.”
“As women, we are carriers of the water. We carry life for the people. So when we carry that water, we are telling people that we will go any lengths for the water. We’ll probably even give our lives for the water if we have to. We may at some point have to die for the water, and we don’t want that,” said Mandamin.
Mandamin joined the team of indigenous representatives from the Indigenous Environmental Network at the People’s Climate March during the week of September 18th to the 24th. “Why I’m here is because I really feel for the water. And to give the message to people that Water is a human right.”
It began with a dream and a memory.
Faith Spotted Eagle slept. In her sleep, she saw her grandmother lying on a table, wrapped in a blanket with her white braids on her chest.
Her sister appeared. “What’s going on?” Spotted Eagle asked.
“I don’t know. They told us to come.”
A door opened; a room full of people, ancestors, stared silently. She felt in their stares a sadness, but also a strength. Another door opened to another room with the same scene. She knew that if she were to keep opening doors, all the rooms in the house would be filled with those watchful, silent ancestors.
Spotted Eagle closed her eyes, unsure of what do to, but knowing that it was impolite to stare back. Then her grandmother’s voice came to her.
“Look at the treaties. There’s something in the treaties.”
That’s when she woke up.
Spotted Eagle is a Dakota/Nakota elder of the Ihanktonwan tribe in South Dakota. She wears skirts that brush her ankles, and her white braids hang over her shoulders like her grandmother’s — but when she puts on sunglasses, she looks like a badass.
She didn’t know exactly what the dream meant, but she believed it was the answer to a problem she’d been thinking about for some time: How to prevent the Keystone XL pipeline from going through Lakota traditional territory, sacred land.
“Who will be able to stand with us?” she thought. “We have to stand with somebody.”
She prayed. And then she remembered the 1863 treaty between the Ihanktonwan and the Pawnee that was the first recorded peace treaty between tribes. She also remembered that throughout the last several decades alliances of natives and non-natives in the Northern Plains had formed and re-formed to defeat threats to land and water. Recently, Lakota elders had made moves to resurrect a new Cowboy Indian Alliance – this time to take on Keystone XL.
In late January of 2013, exactly 150 years after the signing of that first treaty, Spotted Eagle and other activists convened tribal representatives from across the continent on the Ihanktonwan reservation. Their purpose was to ratify the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands and Keystone XL, a document based on that first 1863 peace treaty. It represented unprecedented unified action from North American indigenous people with one new addition: This new treaty also included a few of the ranchers from the Great Plains, who feel their lands are also threatened by the tar sands pipeline.
This image by Michael Horse was requested by Winona LaDuke from Honor the Earth for the Cowboys & Indians Alliance demonstration at the White House in 2014. It depicts cowboys and Native Americans fighting the Keystone XL Pipeline at the White House. Also depicted on the top right side of the image is the Washington Monument.
None of this is making the main stream media and yet a few ranchers protest on federal land and that was the top of the headlines for a month. I wonder why?
Other protests are starting up in other areas now as well, such as in Boone, IA, where it crosses farms and small communities. 30 people were arrested yesterday in their protests
I'll tell you why ... because this is a protest against oil and gas. Oil and Gas are a major part of the elite that control the media. It couldn't be more obvious. This is a very important story and yet, media silence.
“Protecting water and our sacred places has always been at the center of our cause. The Indian encampment on the Cannonball grows daily, with nearly 90 tribes now represented. Many of us have been here before, facing the destruction of homelands and waters, as time and time again tribes were ignored when we opposed projects like the Dakota Access pipeline.
Cannon Ball (United States) (AFP) - Protesters camping near Native American lands in North Dakota to protest the construction of an oil pipeline clashed late Saturday with construction company workers they blamed for destroying ancient sites.
Hundreds of protesters confronted a bulldozer crew in an area known as Cannon Ball, amid the vast grasslands of the northern US state.
On Saturday, protesters were suddenly alerted to renewed digging, a day after the tribe filed evidence in court of dozens of newly discovered artifacts, grave markers and sacred sites.
The tribe said in a statement that a two-mile stretch was destroyed before the bulldozer crew was confronted and stopped.
"This demolition is devastating," Standing Rock Sioux Tribe chairman David Archambault said in a statement. "These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced."
originally posted by: Caver78
New Video of the protest as bulldozers were stopped and protesters pepper sprayed & bitten by private security guard dogs.
This interview was recorded on September 3, 2016. Former Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Tim Mentz explains the destruction of burial grounds and sacred sites by Dakota Access Pipeline LLC. This sacred site is what people were trying to protect when Energy Transfer Partners brought in aggressive dogs to attack unarmed people.
Read more at indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com...