Native American activist makes herself heard

Eryn Wise, a Native American activist who spent months at Standing Rock, gets close to an audience member during her Hancock Symposium talk last week. She offered to help wannabe activists in the audience connect more-experienced activists who can teach them how to make a difference.
Eryn Wise, a Native American activist who spent months at Standing Rock, gets close to an audience member during her Hancock Symposium talk last week. She offered to help wannabe activists in the audience connect more-experienced activists who can teach them how to make a difference.

Activist Eryn Wise spoke as if reporting from the front lines of a battle.

"We were there the day they arrived," she said. "You could see the bones sticking out of the earth. They sicked their dogs on us, on the women that went forward first."

She was recounting an incident from the early days of her stay at the Sacred Stone Camp, where she spent five months protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. She said the company building the pipeline (Dakota Access, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners), had hired "mercenaries" to dig up a sacred burial ground in order to negate the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's claim to the land.

Ultimately, the site was bulldozed, and today the Dakota Access Pipeline is operational. But, Wise said, the fight started at Standing Rock continues elsewhere.

Planting the seed

Wise is a Native American activist in her late 20s whose work focuses on bringing attention to oil and natural gas pipelines that threaten to cross or contaminate Native American lands. Now, she's working for Honor the Earth (honorearth.org), a group that advocates about Native American issues, to fight for other environmental causes.

The Jicarilla Apache and Laguna Pueblo woman spoke last week in Fulton during Westminster College's Hancock Symposium. She recapped her experiences at Standing Rock, talked about continuing efforts by activists and taught students how to be a good ally.

While Wise said she doesn't want her life and work to be sensationalized, it's hard not to see some mythic qualities in the stories she tells.

"I grew up on the Jicarilla Apache reservation in northern New Mexico," she said. "I was raised by my grandma. We didn't know we were poor, because my grandmother was a good storyteller, and we always had something to eat."

Wise acted as an activist before she even knew what activism was. She did things like chaining herself to a buffalo to protest poor conditions the animals were kept in and raising money to buy clean water for the Navajo Nation after the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster.

"I thought that was something you just did," Wise said.

In the summer of 2016, her younger siblings, Alex and Lauren Howland, left for Standing Rock as members of the International Indigenous Youth Council. Protesters at Standing Rock were trying to prevent the completion of the pipeline, which was set to pass under the Missouri River. The river served as the main source of drinking water for local Native American tribes, and activists worried if the pipeline leaked it could pollute that water.

Wise had heard from her grandma the Dakotas were particularly cruel to Native Americans.

"She said, 'If you ever think the government hates you, go to the Dakotas and you'll know what hate feels like,'" Wise remembered.

Fearing for her siblings' safety, she soon followed them.

At its peak, the camp at Standing Rock contained more than 10,000 people, including representatives from 784 tribes. It wasn't a fairy tale. Wise said she and fellow protesters were attacked with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and water hoses, while temperatures dipped well below freezing.

"I watched my little sister get her wrist broken by a police officer," Wise said.

She became a mother figure for many members of the IIYC. It broke her heart to watch the kids become traumatized and disillusioned, she said.

While the pipeline was put on pause in December, thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers denying an easement, President Donald Trump soon removed that barrier. Protesters were ousted in February with the help of the National Guard and police from multiple states.

In March, the pipeline leaked more than 100 gallons of oil before it was officially operational. Construction and testing were completed and oil began to flow through the pipeline at the beginning of June.

Next steps

Although activists lost the battle over Standing Rock, the war against threats to Native American lands and the environment isn't over, Wise said.

"Standing Rock didn't end," she said. "It spread like seed in a wildfire to so many people. We didn't stop the pipeline, but we did spark movements."

For example, Wise is among those opposing the expansion of Enbridge Energy's Line 3 crude oil pipeline in Minnesota. Honor the Earth also protested the now-canceled Sandpiper Pipeline, which would've carried oil across the Great Lakes and the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

Wise sees herself not as a protester, but a protector of the land and water. She and other Native American youth want to protect the earth for the next seven generations, she said.

"We need to be political," she said. "It's not just peace and prayer that are going to get us where we need to go."

But getting involved in politics and leveraging the justice system is difficult when those systems are designed to exclude Native Americans, Wise said. This is where allies can be helpful.

"In most cases, an ally has more privilege than the group they're supporting," Wise said. "This is important, because you can use those privileges to dismantle the systems of oppression."

For example, a rich white supporter of the cause has more visibility and social pull than an impoverished young adult from a reservation. When that ally uses his or her position to elevate Native American voices, instead of speaking over them, that's being a good ally.

"Use your privileges in a beneficial way, but know when to sit back and listen," Wise encouraged the audience.

She asked audience members to read about and research things like fracking and oil pipeline spills, and their tendency to disproportionately harm and affect Native Americans, then join the cause for the sake of future generations.

"Please know that there are people out there that you can't see," she said. "They're the generations that come after us."

Clarifications: The news story above has been amended to reflect clarifications by Eryn Wise that she spent closer to five months at Sacred Stone Camp protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and that she has not been directly involved in opposition to expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline System.