Oceti Sakowin, the largest #NoDAPL encampment in North Dakota, is not accepting new arrivals due to extreme weather conditions. Photo from Facebook
Is it possible for us to learn from history?
By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today A book about how the west was won ("The Earth is Weeping" by Peter Cozzens) ended up on this desk recently and as we turn its pages we wonder if it is possible to learn from the past, recognize America’s historical crimes and try to come to grips with what we have done as a nation and what we are still doing to our own people and our environment. For the full story go to Cannon Ball, North Dakota, as I did a couple of weeks ago. Witness with the thousands of Indians and non-Indians one of the nation’s biggest oil cartel rape of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation’s water resource, the Missouri River. Try to go with an open mind toward the history that is unfolding there. In one way such a book with such a title "The Earth is Weeping" seems particularly appropriate as we hear now that some 2,000 U.S. veterans calling themselves Veterans for Standing Rock, joined the protest opposing the four-state, $3.8 billion Dakota Access ipeline (Zu zu e ca Sa pa under the Missouri River) in North Dakota. Unfortunately, the president of the North Dakota veterans coordinating council has publicly called this move by Veterans of America for Standing Rock “an insult." Those of us whose relatives on the front line of the protest, with family members who came home as war/combat veterans from America’s recent wars in the middle east and elsewhere, some of them homeless, and missing arms and legs, others suffering from PTSD and other physical wounds know that these military vets who are coming to assist other warriors have the sacred right (more than most of us) to do what they know is the right thing. Don’t tell them about weeping!!!! Talk to them about helping the helpless. How dare the North Dakota Veterans Coordinating Council, Russ Stabler, tell them they have no right to express their compassion and dismay? The Sioux Nation is in a war for its very survival and no one knows more than our war veterans what it means to make a decision to fight or make peace with enemies. The fate of America’s West which is the subject of the above named rather badly written book has been decided by invading whites, Christians, Capitalists and Colonists for a long time amidst huge struggles for survival against the magic power enclaves of invaders ever since the 1776 Revolution, and it is time to stop them. This fight against the destruction of the Missouri River can be categorized as “unfinished business."
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Is it possible for us to learn from history? (Contact Elizabeth Cook Lynn at elizcoly@aol.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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