By Zelda Mayer ‘24.5
Grassroots activism and community organizing have always played crucial roles in the United States’ long struggle towards justice, but with the advancement of new technologies that have dramatically broadened access to information and communication, activist work has reached a new frontier. Social media and increased information accessibility have combined with a regenerated youth-led activist culture to create unique and impactful movements, built on the foundations of ancestral resistance. Though the expansion of active organizing through the digital world holds great promise for the future of civil rights in the United States, a new manifestation of ego threatens to delegitimize genuine efforts: performative activism. As the popularity of self-documentation has grown, a rise in participation from individuals who seek virtue and validation of “wokeness”[1] in their contributions to resistance movements has taken place. The result of this surge is a dangerous decentering of directly-affected voices, moving action away from the authentic interests of the particular community, thus misrepresenting and undermining their voices.
This phenomenon was demonstrated in the 2013 vandalism of the Middlebury College 9/11 memorial where five students removed over two-thousand U.S. flags from the campus, claiming they were a disrespect to Abenaki burial grounds. This protest was intended to honor the Abenaki presence in Vermont, but because it was conceived and executed independently from the Abenaki, it did not reflect the true beliefs held or interests of the community. Because students protested in the name of the Abenaki, the negative backlash that arose was directed toward Chief Don Stevens and his tribe without warrant.
Increased citizen participation in resistance movements does not have to take shape in the form of misguided performative activism. When organizing and action are rooted in the voices and interests of the community in protest, contemporary iterations of activist culture can yield a significant result. Hinging on the rich history of Indigenous resistance, modern Native American[2] activism has uniquely adapted to a new era of mass information and political awareness, utilizing the autonomous properties of social media to raise international consciousness on Indigenous issues and battle the persistent oppression of colonization through an intentionally Indigenous framework.
In 2014, Energy Transfer Partners approved the building of a 1,168-mile-long underground oil pipeline beginning in Northwest Dakota, traveling through South Dakota and Iowa, and finally ending in an oil terminal in Illinois (Kennedy). The pipeline, which was designed to transfer tons of fracked crude oil through the United States, was planned to cross through sensitive wildlife habitats, farmlands, and key watersheds for surrounding communities, violating treaty agreements of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and endangering their water supply. In 2016, the tribe filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for “violating the National Historic Preservation Act and other laws, after the agency issued final permits” through a streamlined process of Nationwide Permitting (Kennedy). Over six months the legal disputes culminated in the Trump administration’s decision to go forward in drilling under Lake Oahe — the primary reservoir of the tribal community off the Missouri river–and continuing and quickening the construction of the pipeline (Hersher, 2017). In April of 2016, a small group of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members began to camp along the area, and fellow Indigenous peoples and other supporters began to join, gathering in increasingly large groups to occupy the site of construction.
Tribal leaders began to use social media to call in participants and organize protests, utilizing the #NoDAPL hashtag to garner support and raise awareness on platforms like Facebook and Twitter (Harvey 13). Author Dr. Nick Estes, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, highlighted the significant work of social media in galvanizing “multinational unity, primarily mobilizing everyday people in defense of Native sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights,” a feat that has seldom occurred within United States history (120).[3] Unconventionally, social media, instead of standard news-reporting outlets, performed the task of informing the public of the pipeline’s pressing threat to the Standing Rock Sioux water supply. Because of the persistent—and intentional—erasure of Indigenous issues from mainstream media, the press that was needed to publicize the event came primarily from frontlining Indigenous activists who utilized social media to attract unprecedented organizing numbers (Houska). Tristan Ahtone, journalist and Oklahoman Kiowa tribe member, writes that “it took nearly five months for mainstream outlets to recognise that a few thousand Native Americans physically resisting the construction of an oil pipeline was newsworthy,” in other words, without social media coverage, mainstream media would have actively turned a blind eye, as is historically customary[4].
Aside from the critical work done to mass-inform and gain support for the #NoDAPL movement, social media also allowed for another impactful factor: the shift towards Indigenization. Indigenization is broadly defined as “a process of naturalizing Indigenous knowledge systems and making them evident to transform spaces, places, and hearts” (Antoine, Asma-na-hi, et al). This process is outlined in Linda Tuhiwai-Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, explaining that an indigenist is one who “draws upon the traditions—the bodies of knowledge and corresponding codes of values— evolved over many thousands of years by native peoples the world over” (146). Because the #NoDAPL movement was largely broadcast to the world by those organizing on the frontlines—namely Indigenous peoples—the information was able to be reported directly from the source, unaltered by a colonized lens. The process of Indigenization can be seen in the intentional rhetoric used to characterize those organizing at Standing Rock; these activists called for a replacement of the word “protester” with the more accurate term “water protector” (Herrera). The term “water protector” best describes those in opposition to the pipeline because, above all, they are concerned with protecting the Earth, and here specifically, a precious resource. Across the Standing Rock encampments and to the steps of city halls, signs were held up saying “We are protectors, not protestors.” Mni Wiconi, or “water is life,” has become the movement’s mantra (Iyuskin American Horse). This is the product of a larger paradigm shift being advocated for through Indigenization; the shift commands a reevaluation of how land and natural resources are conceptualized. An Indigenous lens thwarts Western notions of ownership as commodification and offers a vision of property that sees land as an “ecological space that creates our consciousness, not an ideological construct or fungible resource,” in turn, placing responsibility on land-inhabitors to preserve and nourish that land instead of exploiting it (Henderson). The utilization of social media in reporting on the unethical pipeline construction gave way to an intentionally decolonized movement, one that, from its conception, was rooted in the interests of the primary caretakers of the occupied land.
The resistance movement that emerged to fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline expertly employed the tool of social media to raise awareness, gain support, and ground action in the interests of decolonization. Though Standing Rock was not completely free from the ills of performativity, it serves as stark contrast from the reckless attempt at activism on Middlebury’s campus in 2013. The #NoDAPL movement presents a brilliant example of contemporary activist strategy that has successfully implemented the mechanisms of internet social platforms to organize more intentionally. In harnessing the wide-reaching scope and independence of social media influence, water protectors were able to structure the movement according to the interests of the Standing Rock tribal communities and center Native people’s voices and beliefs—a framework which becomes indisputably necessary in light of the Middlebury student protest. Water protectors used social media to publicize a fight that often did not make mainstream news, galvanizing citizens to aid in the struggle however possible and raising global awareness around the modern existence and survivance of Indigenous peoples. The impact of social media in creating an Indigenous-led movement was also present in the rhetorical language used by water protectors, allowing for a deliberate characterization of the movement’s goals and values, avoiding the dangers of incomplete or colonized narratives and granting Indigenous peoples the rights to their own representation.
Though the increased usage of social networking platforms in the sphere of activism can encourage performativity and misguided action, social media should still play a vital role in organizing contemporarily. The services delivered to organizers through platform access will continue to serve the needs of grassroots activists and aid radically in a bottom-up strategy of decolonization.
Works Cited
Ahtone, Tristan. “How Media Did and Did Not Report on Standing Rock.” Aljazeera, 14 Dec. 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/12/14/how-media-did-and-did-not-report-on-standing-rock.
Antoine, Asma-na-hi, et al. Pulling Together: A Guide for Curriculum Developers. BCcampus, 2018. opentextbc.ca, https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/.
Cooper, Lauren. “Native American Activism: 1960s to Present.” Zinn Education Project, 2016, https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/native-american-activism-1960s-to-present/.
Dan Gunderson. “At Standing Rock, Protest Camp Becomes a Movement.” MPR News, 14 Sept. 2016, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/09/14/standing-rock-protest-camp-becomes-movement.
Herrera, Alison. “Standing Rock Activists: Don’t Call Us Protesters. We’re Water Protectors.” The World from PRX, 31 Oct. 2016, https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-31/standing-rock-activists-dont-call-us-protesters-were-water-protectors.
Iyuskin American Horse. “‘We Are Protectors, Not Protesters’: Why I’m Fighting the North Dakota Pipeline.” The Guardian, 18 Aug. 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/18/north-dakota-pipeline-activists-bakken-oil-fields.
Kiel, Doug. “Native American Activism and the Long Red Power Movement.” Penn Museum, 2013, https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/rebuilding-indigenous-nations-native-american-activism-and-the-long-red-power-movement/.
Rebecca Hersher. “Key Moments In The Dakota Access Pipeline Fight.” NPR.Org, 22 Feb. 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/22/514988040/key-moments-in-the-dakota-access-pipeline-fight.
Singer, Emily. “Abenaki Denounce 9/11 Flag Memorial Vandalism.” The Middlebury Campus, 18 Sept. 2013, https://middleburycampus.com/21639/news/abenaki-denounce-911-flag-memorial-vandalism/.
Smith, Cortney. “Ironic Confrontation as a Mode of Resistance: The Homeland Security T-Shirt at the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 3, University of Nebraska Press, 2019, pp. 339–64. JSTOR, doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.43.3.0339.
Tara Houska and Yasmin Belkhyr. “Native American Activism after Standing Rock: Where Is It Now?” Ideas.Ted.Com, 15 Nov. 2018, https://ideas.ted.com/native-american-activism-after-standing-rock-where-is-it-now/.
[1] “Wokeness” refers to a state of being aware of social and racial justice issues, a term co-opted from African-American Vernacular English by the burgeoning sect of young (often white) activists.
[2] Though this essay will speak on Native American resistance in broad terms, it is not to be assumed that this represents the unique interests and struggles of all nations and tribes within the United States.
[3] This assertion is legitimized by the 1982 building of the Northern Border pipeline, in which no large protests were able to thrive and there was minimal news coverage. For further reading see: “Northern Border Pipeline Co. Announced Thursday That Mainline Construction…” by Craig Stevens.
[4] See above reading and Tristan Ahtone’s piece “How media did and did not report on Standing Rock” for more examples.