The Environmental Crisis on Native American Lands

At 3 Generations, we have always aimed to bring world-wide attention to the environmental and cultural crisis of the degradation of Native American lands through our feature film: A Different American Dream, a series of videos and a robust engagement campaign focused on supporting grassroots programs.

As many know, in the Dakotas, fracking and pipelines have decimated once pristine landscapes, causing toxic damage, destroying ancestral burial grounds and now threatening drinking water. The company behind the pipeline project was able to purchased land in September 2016. However, this land had legally been reserved for the Lakota under the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties.

In 2016, hundreds of federal, state, local, and private police advanced on the protests camps along Highway 1806 to evict the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies. Wearing body armor, carrying batons and assault rifles and they were supported by military humvees, snipers, armored personnel carriers, and a surveillance helicopter. Recently a policeman reported that he gave “300+ people hypothermia by blasting them with water cannons, nearly blew off a woman’s arm with a concussion grenade, blinded a woman with a tear gas canister, and shot a medic in the head with a rubber bullet”, while “a pipeline company paid him to do it”. This, and other assaults, were done to Native Americans protesting peacefully about oil companies stealing their land and harming the environment in order to build a pipeline.

We were distressed to learn that on May 30, Michael “Little Feather” Giron was sentenced to thirty-six months in federal prison, becoming the first person to face serious prison time for his role in the struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Giron was one of thousands who gathered in camps on and near the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016 and 2017 to oppose the pipeline.

Our executive director and founder, Jane Wells, visited Standing Rock 3 times between 2014 and 2017 to record testimony and bear witness to the protests against the pipeline on behalf of 3 Generations. In addition she made multiple trips to North Dakota to film A Different American Dream. These visits only reinforced our respect for the beauty of this landscape and our determination to support Native Americans in their efforts to honor their ancestral lands and mother earth herself.

As Americans, freedom of speech is one of our most, if not the most, cherished and important rights enshrined to us in the First Amendment of the Constitution. If we, as Americans, cannot protest without fear of violence and lawful retribution, what else in the Constitution can be ignored? With these vile environmental abuses only increasing, 3 Generations remains as committed as ever to stand with the tribes in the Dakotas to fight for their land and culture. We are in the process of making our next moves to help Native youth in their struggle to preserve their lands and their patrimony.

This week at 3G, we were so proud to hear of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win against the 10-term incumbent representative, Joseph Crowley. After the 2016 election, the new Democratic nominee for Congress was working as a bartender when an activist she knew at Standing Rock told her the camp could use more women. The then-27-year-old Ocasio-Cortez and two friends set up a GoFundMe page and set out on a road trip to South Dakota. Ocasio-Cortez knew the importance of ‘bearing witness’ after seeing the disturbing aftermath of President Trump’s election. She and her friends brought a camera and set out to see a “first-person idea of what was going on”, as she told Mother Jones in 2017. She knew that being neutral or silent only encourages the tormentor and never the tormented. On behalf of the Native population and the country in general, Ocasio-Cortez, and many others like her, instinctively knew they could not stand idly by and fail to protest the horrible injustices taking place around them.

The community of people at Standing Rock, who also shared these sentiments, inspired Ocasio-Cortez and, by doing so, facilitated her historic win this month. She has credited her success to everyone who has helped her along the way. Watching her journey and all she has done, not just for her home of the Bronx but the nation, has reinvigorated our mission here at 3G as well. We must always take sides, as indifference is, as Elie Wiesel said, the “epitome of evil”.

Because of this, we have continued to support and strengthen our relationship with the Indigenous Women’s Media Network, founded in the heart of Standing Rock, which “[brings] updates to the rest of the world about the mass social injustices and human rights violations that were occurring to the Indigenous people and their non-native allies." Given the assault on environmental protections and regulations under the current EPA administration, now more than ever, we look to the courage and vision of water protectors, like the women of the network, to lead the way on protecting Mother Earth.

As such, we love the idea of the Indigenous Film Festival, which explores a diverse range of Indigenous storytelling to strengthen heritage and cultural identity in not only local communities but the global community as well. Watch this space for more news on the film festival which takes place in August!