Siege at Standing Rock |
For much of 2016, demonstrators in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, withstood tear gas, arrests, rubber bullets and severe weather while camped out in an isolated area that has become known as Oceti Sakowin Camp. While on its face, the encampments are demonstrations against an oil pipeline, some have called the battle between a Dallas-based oil company and the Standing Rock Sioux a larger civil rights movement for Native Americans -- a comparison bolstered by law enforcement's use of water cannons on protesters in late November 2016.
The Last Ghost Dancers
Chase Iron Eyes, a former Congressional candidate and member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, calls the demonstration "our Ghost Dance." The Ghost Dance was a new religious movement incorporated into numerous American Indian belief systems in the late 1880s in an attempt to revitalize traditional culture and to find a way to face increasing poverty, hunger, and disease. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka, proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to indigenous peoples throughout the region. He also stated that the people must be good and love one another, and not fight, steal, lie or engage in war.
The Ghost Dance was based on the circle dance. Participants joined hands and sidestepped clockwise around a circle, stooping to pick up dirt and throwing it in the air, all the while singing special songs and striving to fall into a visionary trance. Each ceremony lasted for five successive days and was repeated every six weeks. The ritual dance swept throughout much of the Western United States, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, Indian tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs.