"To see things in an objective light": the Dakota Access Pipeline and the ongoing construction of settler colonial landscapes (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism
Starting in April 2016, thousands of people, led by Standing Rock Sioux Tribal members, gathered at camps to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)—creating the #NoDAPL movement. I am concerned with how critics of #NoDAPL often focus on defending the pipeline’s safety precautions or the many attempts the Army Corps of Engineers made at consulting the Tribe. Yet critics rarely engage what LaDonna Brave Bull Allard calls “the larger story.” To me, as an Indigenous supporter of #NoDAPL, one thread of the larger story concerns how DAPL is an injustice against the Tribe. The type of injustice is one that many other Indigenous peoples can identify with—U.S. settler colonialism. I seek to show how there are many layers to the settler colonial injustice behind DAPL that will take me, by the end of this essay, from U.S. disrespect of treaty promises in the 19th century to environmental sustainability and climate change in the 21st century. Updated and republished (2019) in Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Social Change. Edited by C. Miller and J. Crane. University of Colorado Press, pgs. 320-337. Originally published in Whyte, K.P. 2017. The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism. RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities: 19 (1): 154-169.
[Updated July 2020] The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and US Settler Colonialism
Contemporary Moral Issues 5th Edition
Starting in April 2016, thousands of people, led by Standing Rock Sioux Tribal members, gathered at camps to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)—creating the #NoDAPL movement. I am concerned with how critics of #NoDAPL often focus on defending the pipeline’s safety precautions or the many attempts the Army Corps of Engineers made at consulting the Tribe. Yet critics rarely engage what LaDonna Brave Bull Allard calls “the larger story.” To me, as an Indigenous supporter of #NoDAPL, one thread of the larger story concerns how DAPL is an injustice against the Tribe. The type of injustice is one that many other Indigenous peoples can identify with—U.S. settler colonialism. I seek to show how there are many layers to the settler colonial injustice behind DAPL that will take me, by the end of this essay, from U.S. disrespect of treaty promises in the 19th century to environmental sustainability and climate change in the 21st century. Updated in July 2020, and will be republished in updated form in 2020 (or 2021) in Contemporary Moral Issues 5th Edition, edited by Lawrence Hinman and published by Taylor Frances. May be cited with this pagination and referencing academia.edu URL. Originally published as Whyte, K. 2017. The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism. RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities: 19 (1): 154-169. Republication (2019) in The Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change. Edited by C. Miller and J. Crane, 320-337. University of Colorado Press.
2022
Purpose - The purpose of this thesis is to explore what thematic frames national, regional, local, and Indigenous newspapers have used when reporting on the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. Specifically, by analyzing the newspaper articles which were published in six different newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, and Indian Country Today, over the course of 12 months, this thesis discusses to what extent the media coverage can be an example of settler colonialism as the conflict surrounding the Keystone XL has largely been located to Indigenous land across several states, including Nebraska. Methodology – By using collected data from newspaper articles, this thesis processed more than 200 articles which included the search term “Keystone XL” in order to label the various articles with a thematic frame. Multiple frames could be used in any given article, but one main frame was assigned to each article. The descriptive statistics break down the different thematic frames per newspaper. Then, excerpts from the different articles were extracted and prescribed into the four main thematic frames that emerged from the analysis. Each thematic frame also contains sub-themes which support the overall main thematic frame. Findings – Four main thematic frames were identified in the newspaper coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline: ‘Politics and Economy’, ‘Climate’, ‘Grassroots Mobilization and Indigenous Opposition’, and ‘Foreign relations.’ The thematic frames contextualize the dispute surrounding the expansion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in different manners, in the different newspapers to cater to the different audiences. Notably, it was mainly the local and regional newspapers in Nebraska which reported on the local opposition and the alliance of white farmers, landowners, environmentalists, and Indigenous people. Originality – This thesis uses the Keystone XL pipeline as a case for studying settler colonialism in American newspapers, by arguing that settler colonialism is more than physical land acquisition and genocide. The way settler media refers to ecological violence on native land are present-day forms of settler colonialism. Acknowledging this is an important step both towards decolonization, and to work for environmental justice for Indigenous communities. Keywords: settler colonialism, Keystone XL pipeline, Nebraska, ecological violence, grassroots mobilization, environmental justice, energy infrastructure, newspaper coverage, thematic analysis
This is Not the Time of Civil Disobedience: Settler Time in Civil Disobedience Discourse
This presentation reflects upon the significance of settlers using the language of ‘civil disobedience’ to describe the ongoing standoff against the Dakota Access Pipeline, centred around the Sacred Stone Camp and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. I assert that the language of civil disobedience is a not only an inadequate discourse within this context, but it also performs a dangerous re-signification of these events, reinscribing them as contiguous with processes of colonization. This is because the language of civil disobedience, as it is deployed throughout dominant liberal academic literature seems to be inextricably tied to, and instantiate a reification of, the (settler) state. In as much as the canonical literature is concerned, those who commit acts of civil disobedience tend to be conceptually emplaced as subjects within a temporality signified through the state. The civilly disobedient subject(s) are not viewed as resistant to the prevailing political order: they are emplaced within the state and within the state’s claim to legitimate political obligation. Affixing such discourses to Standing Rock reproduces the logic that the American government is itself a given or apolitical body. This works to disappear the processes of historic and ongoing settler colonization by normalizing the settler colony’s claim to authoritative rule over Indigenous peoples. I propose the ethical and political imperative of abandoning discourses of civil disobedience, in favour of those that more fully respect the anticolonial struggle at Standing Rock.
Property and whiteness: the Oregon standoff and the contradictions of the U.S. Settler State
On 2 January 2016, armed anti-government protestors took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) in rural Oregon. The takeover of the MNWR is part of a larger, much longer set of movements called the Sagebrush Rebellion that has come to define contemporary white contestations about the federal regulation of lands in the American West. Specifically, we argue that the armed takeover of MNWR is revelatory of the way white supremacy intersects with place in important and consequential ways. In addition, we examine the politics of place and property to interrogate the way settler imaginaries affords settlers a perceived right to property and the land. We contend that this perception, illustrated by the events at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, is enmeshed within particular conceptions of property, the frontier, and whiteness. The MNWR takeover illuminates how discourses of whiteness and property rights are essential to the ongoing production of white supremacy within the US settler state.
Theory, Culture & Society
This article explores the politics of digital protest and emergent forms of sociality in the #NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline) movement using Elizabeth Povinelli’s concept of geontopower. I begin by situating the concept of geontopower in relation to a range of biopolitical, decolonial, and ecocritical theory in order to show its importance in conceptualizing the interconnectedness of decolonial and environmental interests. I use this theoretical framework to analyze several instances of what I call ‘digital decoloniality’ in the #NoDAPL movement, cases where the particular affordances of social media technologies and the efforts of Indigenous activists and non-Indigenous allies disrupted normative assumptions regarding the boundaries of the digital and ‘analog’ worlds and resisted the geontopolitical structuring of life and nonlife. I argue that the #NoDAPL hashtag works to enact the prerogatives of Western science-based environmentalism and Indigenous epistemological tenets in c...
What is happening at Iŋyaŋ Wakháŋagapi Othí (which is located near to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation in so-called North Dakota) has been widely hailed as the largest gathering of Indigenous peoples in a generation, or more. Yet, despite that, settlers continue to prove either unable or unwilling to represent this standoff adequately in our media and popular discourses. In this paper I am interested in parsing the discursive significance that is played by the language of ‘civil disobedience’ as it is applied to the Standing Rock standoff in particular; however, I believe my analysis may also be applicable elsewhere. It is my central contention that while the language of civil disobedience may occasionally be deployed by water protectors themselves for the strategic purposes of harm reduction - establishing an appeal for legal accommodation - I believe that settlers who seek to ally themselves with this cause are responsible for utilizing and propagating the more radical, and consciously anti-colonial, discourses developed both at Standing Rock and over the centuries of resistance struggles. This shift in our discourse is imperative, first and foremost, because it is asked of us by those whose bodies are directly in harm’s way. It is also imperative because the hegemonic language of civil disobedience is at once inadequately equipped for describing this situation in its full complexity and, moreover, such a language carries connotations and implications that reify the settler state’s colonial relationship towards Indigenous peoples generally, and the Sioux in particular. This, I assert, is because the language of civil disobedience sustains a system of signification premised on, and reproduced through, the temporality of the settler state. Unpublished; All Rights Reserved; Do Not Copy, Print or Site without the express permission of the Author