[As
usual, I’ll end
the year—even this most frustrating of years—by AmericanStudying a handful
of major stories. This time featuring a special Friday Guest Post from one of
the wonderful student papers in my Senior Seminar on 21st Century
America! Please add your year in review responses, thoughts, and airing of
grievances in comments.]
On two vital
contexts for the year’s most impressive activist victory.
If the
presidential election was 2016’s most frustrating political and social event,
the protests
at North Dakota’s Standing Rock reservation were its most successful. The
Obama administration’s decision to order the Army Corps of Engineers to find a
new route for the Dakota Access Pipeline, one that doesn’t transgress on sacred
Sioux land, might well be in jeopardy from the incoming Trump administration,
not least because both Trump and his Energy
secretary nominee Rick Perry apparently are connected to (or
at least have at one time owned stock in) the pipeline’s parent company. But
if that uncertainty means the fight will continue, that shouldn’t and doesn’t
take away from the very successful fight that the Standing Rock protesters—including
the largest
gathering of Native Americans in more than a century, and many supporters
who joined them in their efforts—already waged and won. In the face of nothing
less than police brutality, including hoses
being turned on them amid freezing conditions (among other violent
assaults), these water protectors modeled the best of American activism.
The Standing
Rock protests aren’t just a 2016 triumph, however—they also reflect, and can
help us better remember, important and inspiring American histories. I wrote
about one series of such histories, those of Native American activisms across
the centuries post-contact, in this
Huffington Post piece. I had the
chance in that piece to highlight many of my favorite Native American activist
texts and figures, from William
Apess and the Cherokee
Memorials to Sarah
Winnemucca and Standing
Bear. Standing Bear’s 1879
trial is particularly relevant to Standing Rock, as his activist voice and
legal efforts secured a vital response and recognition from the federal
government. But I would also highlight Apess’s amazing and brave “Eulogy on
King Philip” (1836), a speech he delivered at Boston’s Odeon Theater and
which he opens by arguing that the Wampanoag leader should be compared to
George Washington, and that he “died a martyr to his cause, though
unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.” If we could truly hear
Apess there, truly see a native leader like Philip
(Metacomet) as another kind of national founding father, we’d be a long way
toward avoiding future Standing Rocks.
At Standing
Rock, as in all these historical moments, native activists and leaders led the
fight for their rights and sovereignty. But in each case, they were supported
and aided by impressive non-native allies, from William Lloyd Garrison (who
helped Apess and Mashpee achieve their 1834 legal victory) to Lewis H. Hopkins
(the Bureau of Indian Affairs reformer who married Sarah Winnemucca and accompanied
her on the Eastern lecture tour that helped sway public opinion and federal
authority to the Paiute’s cause). The Standing Rock protests featured a number
of prominent non-native allies as well, from celebrities
like Shailene Woodley to political figures like
Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.
But I would single out the group of military veterans who journeyed to Standing
Rock to protect the water protectors, not only because of their courage in
doing so but also and especially because
it produced this truly stunning apology and moment. That ceremony, like
many aspects of the Standing Rock protests, doesn’t only represent a model for
American community and activism moving forward—it also echoes and extends, and
can thus help us remember, these most inclusive and shared American histories.
Next 2016 review
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other 2016 stories you’d highlight?
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