The Water Protectors at Standing Rock: Survivance Strategies for Gendered Relinking

Abstract

Violence against Indigenous individuals and the land is exacerbated by the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Such violence stems from and is sustained by structures of settler colonialism. Analyzing RISE (2017), a documentary television series which followed the Standing Rock occupation, I argue the Water Protectors enacted their inherent sovereignty through strategies of survivance that delinked from settler colonialism and provided gendered relinking to Indigenous knowledges. The Water Protectors’ decolonial talk presented embodied messages of Indigenous survivance that highlighted their agency to resist settler colonialism. By asserting their active decolonial presence, the Water Protectors challenged settler colonial gendered violence, constructing new realities where Indigenous peoples and the earth are decolonized.

Keywords:

• Gendered relinking
• settler colonialism
• Standing Rock
• survivance
• Water Protectors

Acknowledgments

I wish to recognize that much of the writing of this article occurred in Kansas, the ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, Oceti Sakowin, and Wichita tribes and nations. Today, this region is home to the tribal reservations of the Iowa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Sac and Fox nations. I also would like to thank Beth Innocenti, the anonymous reviewers, and Claire Sisco King for their support and guidance, which was vital for the development of this project.

Notes

1 I use the phrase Indigenous women, children, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ to include nonbinary people and people with diverse sexualities when referring to those most affected by settler colonial gendered violence.

2 I use the term Indigenous to honor the diversity and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples from across the world present during the Standing Rock occupation and to recognize Indigenous peoples as the first inhabitants of North America. I refer to the Standing Rock occupants as Water Protectors in order to refer to them on their own terms, as protectors of their land and sovereignty.

3 I must acknowledge the controversy surrounding Andrea Smith and make clear that I do not support her false claims about being Native American. I have limited my inclusion of Smith’s work for this reason. People who engage in these issues must speak openly about who they are, what brings them to this work, and who they cite. Smith’s contributions in Conquest has had impacts combating colonial gender violence, but the important work resisting colonial gender violence cannot be limited to Smith’s work.