"Standing Rock: A New Moment for Native-American Rights"

The unprecedented protest over the Dakota Access Pipeline marks a milestone in the movement for Native-American rights.

"The last time Native Americans gathered and the nation noticed was in 1973. That February, after members of the Oglala Sioux tribe failed to impeach their chairman on charges of corruption, they, with leaders of the American Indian Movement, occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. It was a final act in the movement’s years-long campaign to compel the federal government to honor tribal treaty rights. Already, Native Americans had occupied Alcatraz Island, in a largely symbolic attempt to reclaim it, and Mt. Rushmore, which had been part of the Great Sioux Reservation until Congress redrew its borders. But at Wounded Knee the movement found its symbolic apex: the U.S. Marshals surrounded the occupiers, evoking the start of the massacre that had killed more than a hundred and fifty Lakota people in 1890. Over months, the standoff escalated. Officers manned roadblocks in armored personnel carriers, and neighboring states lent their National Guards. Both sides traded gunfire. The first man shot was a marshal, who survived but was paralyzed from the waist down. The second was a Cherokee man, who died. The third was Lawrence Lamont, an Oglala Lakota, whose death was the beginning of the end of the occupation."

Sierra Crane-Murdoch reports for the New Yorker October 12, 2016.

SEE ALSO:

"Tribes Dig In For Winter As Pipeline Tensions Rise" (EnergyWire)

"Sanders, Dem Senators Press Obama To Halt ND Pipeline" (The Hill)

"Fight Pipeline, Drill for Oil: Either Way, Tribes Want Control of Their Lands" (Bloomberg)