What is now
called North America was once inhabited entirely by indigenous human cultures
nestled into natural communities. White settlers have been waging a campaign
against these human cultures and the land for the last 500 years in countless
actions which can only be understood as insanity.
As a descendant of these settlers, and because my skin is
white, I’ve been born into societal privilege afforded to some at the expense
of others. Yet, I see the blatant perversion and inherent wrongness o the
dominant culture, and choose instead to ally myself with the natural world and
indigenous communities striving to maintain their traditional ways of life.
This is what led me to recently join a caravan to the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to stand with the Oglala Sioux tribe
of the Lakota people in opposition to an ongoing genocide faced by their people
at the hands of predatory liquor sellers in the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska.
Whiteclay has a population of 14 and consists of one short
road lined with four liquor stores. Collectively, the town sells around 12,000
cans of beer every day, primarily to the Native population of Pine Ridge, which
has banned alcohol within its borders. Now, one in four children on the
reservation is born with Fetal Alcohol Disorder and the general population’s
life expectancy is the lowest in the United States.
Lakota activists have been taking action against Whiteclay
for years, but some wanted an escalation in the battle and chose to invite
members of the radical environmental movement, Deep Green Resistance (DGR),
to join them for an act of civil disobedience.
