Why Standing Rock Matters

I was going to write a post today about Standing Rock and why it matters.

I was going to write about how it's an issue of environmental justice, an opportunity for us to finally start taking a stand against the fossil fuels that are destroying our planet. I was going to write about how if we are to have any chance of slowing climate change – of preserving our farmlands and our icecaps, our coastal towns and our inland towns, our lakes and our forests, our cities and our seasons – then we need to decide when we are finally going to make a stand for sustainable energy, and that it’s time for that stand to begin now.

I was going to write about how it's a continuation of the racial injustice that has been perpetuated against a marginalized and subjugated people group for the past 200 years - about how it’s no coincidence that this pipeline was planned to border a reservation instead of a white community. About how we expect a “beaten people” to sit down, to shut up, to accept the reality that they will always be subject to both the deliberate and the incidental consequences of my people’s greed.

I was going to write about the pressures that oil corporations have put on the small landowners in the Dakotas, chasing them and threatening them and bullying them until they had no choice but to sell their land or drown in the court system of a society that has been both bribed and swindled at the same time. About how a company lures in support with the promises of a few jobs that will last a few years and then disappear long before our landscapes recover. About how the company misleads with equal ease both the public and its own employees, telling them that the process is safe, that it is inevitable, that those who prioritize the health of the river are unjustified.

I was going to write about the issue of public health for millions of people in the Missouri River Watershed, and the poisoning of a river that I experienced in Kalamazoo after the 2010 oil spill. I was going to write about how I kayaked through the oil slicks in stretches where the smallmouth once swam, and scraped the thick crude oil off my feet after wading. I was going to write about how people were forced to leave their houses when the tangible stench of oil rose from the river outside their yard and made their homes uninhabitable. I was going to write about how I still know places where I can find that oil, six years after the spill and after Enbridge has continued on their merry way.

I was going to write about how everything about my faith as a Christian finds the idea repugnant – about how much I detest the prioritization of corporate profits over the health of a people, over the respect of the buried and the hope for the unborn, over my commandment from my Creator to take care of His garden.

I was going to write about the detestability of using violence on a people that makes every effort to stay within the confines of the law. I was going to write about the deplorability of using attack dogs and pepper spray and armored vehicles and tear gas and rubber bullets and bean bag rounds and acoustic cannons against a group that has resisted the temptation to act in violence – even though violence is perhaps never more justified than in when use to protect the health of your home, your family, your future.

Then I realized that it makes more sense to read from the people who have been there over the past few days - who have seen the attack dogs and have seen the pepper spray used on the elderly and have seen the armored cars and have seen the SUVs burning on the highway. People who are fighting to protect the same water that is being drank by those who oppose them, people who are fighting for the lands where their ancestors lie buried and where their children will grow up some day whether their water is pure or not and regardless of how much we’ve heated their planet.

So do it. Read. Watch the live stream. Observe, learn, and reach an opinion. And after you’ve done that, act. Write a letter. Donate canned goods. Heck, go join them.

Join all of us. Because make no mistake – this is a fight for us all.