Becoming ‘water protectors’ changed their lives

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(CNN)On Thursday, tensions surrounding protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline reached a new pitch, with fires and forcible removal of protestors reported. Over the past few months, 269 people, including journalists, minors and “Divergent” star Shailene Woodley, have been arrested for their efforts to fight the pipeline. The controversial $3.7 billion project is set to cover 1,172 miles and cross the Missouri river less than a mile from the Standing Rock Reservation, which opponents say puts the tribe’s drinking water at risk. While Dakota Access LLC has continued construction on the project, advocates have been risking their safety and engaging in non-violent direct actions in order to protect their community from a dangerous project.

This development comes two months after the Obama administration announced that it would temporarily ask Dakota Access LLC to pause construction on the pipeline until the Department of Justice can consider whether the project was approved with proper consultation of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. This small win was an important moment for a movement that began with an online petition and a small riverside prayer camp — and has since gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures along with thousands of campers on the ground in North Dakota, whom authorities have begun to remove.

With this broader despair so constantly on their minds, many of the Standing Rock Youth talk about the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline as being about so much more than resource extraction. For them, the pipeline is just another example of the way in which Native people are treated as invisible, and pushed to the margins of society in order to make way for development whose benefits never trickle down in meaningful ways to Native American communities.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is certainly not the first time that Native Americans have been treated like collateral damage to our country’s never-ending quest for more oil, but the youth movement to stop it is one of the first times that indigenous protests have been heard on such a national — and even international — stage. These young people are finally beginning to feel that their voices count.

There is an old saying that rings true at each Dakota Access action I’ve been to: “We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.” Jasilyn, Bobbi Jean and the Standing Rock youth are living examples of those who would care for the earth as something to be returned in equal or better condition. If the pipeline is successfully thwarted, it will be because of them.

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