Since late August, Indigenous people and their allies descended on camps along Cannonball River at the northern boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota [1], to decry the construction [2] of the Dakota Access pipeline. The pipeline, if built, would stretch [3] one thousand one hundred and seventy-two miles (1,172) miles and carry half a million barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken oilfields —  right through lands held sacred by Native groups.

While the movement at Standing Rock has reinvigorated the larger climate change movement, it’s also indicative of a emerging Indigenous movement of resistance and restoration of their lands, waters and other natural resources that’s sweeping across North America. Show host and Earth Island Journal [4] editor, Maureen Nandini Mitra, talks about what this growing movement means with award-winning filmmaker, journalist and photographer, Christopher (Toby) McLeod, director of Sacred Land Film Project, who has been working with Indigenous communities for more than 35 years.

 

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/north-dakota

[2] https://thinkprogress.org/protests-push-for-dakota-access-pipeline-halt-faeb443ac6d4#.2mpfg8og0

[3] https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympleii/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-dakota-oil-pipeline-and-the?utm_term=.fvVM7LB9x#.ucVB5yEVZ

[4] http://www.earthisland.org/journal/