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North Dakota authorities used armored vehicles and overwhelming para-military force to attack the Water Protectors at Standing Rock in 2016. Photo posted by Facebook from the Sacred Stone camp by Rob Wilson Photography.
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Three years ago this past week combined, heavily armed paramilitary forces with
armored vehicles, helicopters, and sound cannon attacked a
large unarmed prayer service at a Construction site on the Dakota Pipeline. Construction workers had abandoned their equipment
and fled as Native Americans led by the Standing
Rock Sioux and their allies approached
the site. There were reports of teargas canisters being dropped from
the helicopters. 27 were arrested in one
day. It was a dramatic escalation of the use of state power against on-going protests
which resulted in an unprecedented
unity between Native nations from
across the U.S.A., North America, and
Latin America and support from aboriginal peoples across the globe.
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Photo of a mural taken by my old college pal Bill Delaney at Art Alley Gallery in Rapid City, South Dakota.
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Something very important was happening
for the Earth, the environment, and for the Tribes and Nations who the exploiters and despoilers were once confident had been ground into helplessness.
Now three years later the pipe line
was completed and has already leaked and polluted waters. States
are rushing to enact right wing American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation to make virtually
any protest against energy companies
felonies with long prison sentences and crush fines for those who even
encourage or support the protests. Indigenous
people around the world continue to defend water and the earth and young native
leaders have joined Greta Thunberg in
her protests and in the Climate Strikes.
It is worth a look back at a poem I
committed back then.
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Jay Silverheels as Tonto on TV's Lone Ranger.
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A note of acknowledgement—The title
and the germ of the idea was borrowed from a long-ago monologue by the late, great George
Carlin. I don’t think he would mind.
Tonto Will Not Ride into Town for You
For The Camp of the Sacred Stone 9/30/2016
Tonto will not ride into town for you,
Kemosabe,
and
be beat to pulp by the bad guys
on
your fool’s errand.
Pocahontas will not throw her nubile,
naked body
over
your blonde locks
to
save you from her Daddy’s war club.
Squanto will not show you that neat
trick
with
the fish heads and maize
and
will watch you starve on rocky shores.
Chingachgook will save his son and
lineage
and
let you and your White women
fall
at Huron hands and be damned.
Sacajawea and her babe will not show
you the way
or
introduce you to her people,
and
leave you lost and doomed in the Shining Mountains.
Sitting Bull will not wave and parade
with your Wild West Show
nor
Geronimo pose for pictures for a dollar
in
fetid Florida far from home.
They are on strike form your folklore
and fantasy,
have
gathered with the spirits of all the ancestors
to
dance on the holy ground, the rolling prairie
where
the buffalo were as plentiful
as
the worn smooth stones of the Mnišoše,
the
mighty river that flows forever.
They are called by all the nations from
the four corners
of
the turtle back earth who have gathered here,
friends
and cousins, sworn enemies alike,
united
now like all of the ancestors
to
kill the Black Snake, save the sacred water,
the
soil where the bones of ancestors rest,
and
the endless sky where eagle, Thunderbird, and Raven turn.
Tonto has better things to do,
Kemosabe…
—Patrick
Murfin
