Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
As the name implies, Awake, A Dream of Standing Rock, is a series of images and reflections, unbound by the conventions of documentary storytelling. The film's dream-weaving approach at times works masterfully, capturing sounds and images that should be preserved in crisp, heartbreaking detail. In other moments, the film veers between the poetic and the historic with such ease that I was left wondering whether some viewers would know the difference.
The film's first chapter was directed by Josh Fox, who exposed the environmental toll of fracking in Gasland. The footage expands upon familiar scenes, invoking imagery that elicits every emotion it intends to. Co-writer Floris White Bull's poetic narration is penetrative and well-paced. But poetry does have its limitations. One can hardly complain because, as the title warned, Awake is a dream of Standing Rock, not a hard timeline, or an exploration of the complex lessons it taught.
But hybridizing poetry and history is risky. When a narrator veers between poetic flourish, such as White Bull's characterization of the camp as a place without hate or fear, and factual details, about police attacks and pipelines, edges can blur.
The film's second section is both breathtaking and essential. Without narration, the images and activities of the people being filmed tell their own story, and the footage provides a haunting sense of what it was like to be on the ground in Standing Rock, during that sprawling movement moment.
As someone who was deeply connected to these events but not a long term resident of the camps, I was grateful for the moments captured in Part II. During a sequence where Water Protectors knelt in prayer on Backwater Bridge, I could feel the holiness of the moment, and I could even remember how the cold air felt in my throat as I walked on that bridge.
And when Protectors were attacked on the bridge with water cannons, I relived every emotion I experienced that night, knowing my friends were on that bridge, soaking and battered, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.
At that point, I messaged some of my friends who were traumatized by police in Standing Rock to offer a trigger warning.
The film's third and final section was directed by Native filmmaker and activist Myron Dewey, of Digital Smoke Signals. The importance of Dewey's work as a documentarian is inarguable. But as a direct action educator and organizer, I must disagree with his initial commentary in Awake.
In Part III, we are presented with text summaries of some of the legal history at work. Next we hear Dewey's take on events. Dewey's first major assertion is that Morton County Police had initially been friendly to protesters, and only turned violent after the desecration of sacred ground by Energy Transfer Partners.
In truth, police frequently approach protesters respectfully, at first, with tensions mounting as movements grow, threatening the status quo with their potential.
Further, attributing police violence to desecration de-contextualizes Native struggle from the realities of policing and resistance. People who brave the frontlines of liberation struggles are routinely battered in the U.S., whether they are challenging pipelines, police violence, or any other oppressive instrument or practice. Native people are killed by police at a higher rate than any other group, and our movements have always been met with violence and repression. It would be ahistorical to assume that police would have continued to treat Water Protectors gently as the movement grew, if not for the desecration.
The fear of what Water Protectors might accomplish caused law enforcement to show its true character in Standing Rock. From dogs and water cannons to COINTELPRO tactics that aimed to escalate tensions between Protectors, what police unleashed in Standing Rock was an unsurprising culmination of a history of violence toward Natives. No new violation of the sacred was needed to trigger this violence that has recreated itself since first contact.
Police who approached with a smile, and even joined round dances in the early days of the movement, were two-faced foes—always one order away from everything that followed. To deny this not only separates us from history, but from other justice movements in which people have been brutalized when they raised their hopes and voices too high.
To his credit, Dewey does capture the intractable nature of law enforcement in Standing Rock, highlighting the lack of accountability and, ultimately, the impunity with which police harassed and harmed Water Protectors, while criminalizing Protectors for minor or even wholly imagined legal offenses.
As someone who believes in the importance of frontline storytelling, I appreciate Awake for what it uplifts. Despite my narrative disagreements with the film, I think it's an important effort, that should be seen—especially for the film's second section.
It is the hope of any movement moment that it be remembered, and carried by many voices, which will mean the offering of many perspectives. If the viewer understands Awake as a puzzle piece in a much larger picture, in which many complexities go untouched, it will aid in their understanding.
But it is also crucial that the viewer understand the film as a dream, a vision, and a re-remembering, not a historical or social analysis of a movement and its many moving parts.
At their best, the Standing Rock camps were still rife with contradiction and difficulty. They had no uniformity of belief with regard to tactics or strategy. In truth, no such uniformity is possible in such an unprecedented convergence. Native peoples are not exempt from any of the difficulties that the tactic of occupation can bring. Factions form. Conflicts unfold. Participants butt heads over tactics and strategies—and some will invariably confuse the two.
The Standing Rock I knew was not a mystical place with a uniform perspective. It was a complex place—an experiment in love, hope, courage, and solidarity, unlike anything our peoples had experienced. It was full of beauty and catastrophe. It was bitingly human because we are human. And, as is often the case, the magic was in the mess.
At the film's end, the legacy of Standing Rock is addressed, with White Bull telling us that "what started in Standing Rock is now all over the world." A number of struggles and global movements are highlighted, in quick succession, in a narrative that seemingly attributes those movements to the momentum of Standing Rock. In some cases, the participants in those movements actually call themselves "Water Protectors," in the spirit of Standing Rock. But some of those struggles, like the fight against oil companies in the Amazon, substantially predate the Standing Rock encampments. It's important for us to acknowledge this, both out of respect for those movements, and as a challenge to those who viewed Standing Rock as something wholly new or unusual.
The story of Standing Rock—of state violence merging with corporate interests, of human potential and human destruction—is not an original concept. It has many iterations, across history and around the world. Standing Rock is no less special for this. If anything, I hope the unacquainted will take it as an invitation, to study the struggles they may have missed, and to join the fray when called.
Watch the trailer below:
Kelly Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Kelly is a queer Native writer, organizer, and movement photographer. She is also a direct action trainer and a co-founder of The Chicago Light Brigade and the direct action collective Lifted Voices. She is a contributing writer at Truthout and blogs at TransformativeSpaces.org, where this article originally appeared, about U.S. movements and her work as an organizer against state violence.
This article was funded in part by a grant from the Surdna Foundation. Reposted with permission from our media associate Yes! Magazine.
From powerful Indigenous and frontline leadership at the 200,000 strong People's Climate March in Washington DC, to ceaseless advocacy and actions in courtrooms, in the streets, in the halls of government, and in the offices of financial institutions that support exploitation and extraction—the DAPL resistance continues, while also joining together with other communities to face mounting pipeline struggles including Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain, Enbridge's Line 3, TransCanada's Energy East, Sonoco Logistic's Bayou Bridge, the resurrection of TransCanada's Keystone XL and efforts to stop fossil fuel extraction at the source.
Over the past months, Water Protectors from various Indigenous nations across the U.S. have made waves while traveling to seven European countries for The Stand Up for Standing Rock Tour; have opened the L'eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp in South Louisiana to stop the Bayou Bridge pipeline (the southern end of DAPL); and have helped organize, through the International Indigenous Youth Council, an 80 mile run across Northern New Mexico in opposition to growing fracking in the Chaco Canyon region; amongst many other diverse and powerful actions.
Indigenous organizations including Honor the Earth and the Indigenous Environmental Network, who have successfully fought fossil fuel developments projects for years, continue to advocate, take action, and help open platforms for the voices of the NoDAPL and other pipeline resistance movements to be heard.
The Indigenous-led Mazaska Talks coalition has also been formed, joining the 121 First Nations and Tribes of the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion in demanding banks divest from the companies building Dakota Access and proposed tar sands pipelines.
Many other allied groups are organizing around fossil fuel divestment and actions are underway, with Defund DAPL reporting that, thus far, more than $82 million dollars by individuals and more than $4 trillion dollars by cities and tribes have been removed from the financial institutions connected to DAPL.
On June 14, there was a critical victory when, as part of the lengthy legal battle being led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, a U.S. federal court from the District of Columbia agreed that the Army Corp of Engineers failed to consider the National Environmental Protection Act and off reservation treaty rights in DAPL's permitting process.
In May 2017, leaked information from The Intercept helped expose counter-terrorism tactics used by DAPL's private security firm Tiger Swan to aggressively suppress Indigenous peoples and their allies in Standing Rock, North Dakota as they exercised their human rights.
Significantly, all of this momentum has taken place in the face of a climate change denying Trump administration determined to drive forward pipelines such as DAPL through an expansion of a government that caters to fossil fuel corporations, and the banks and financial institutions that support them.
As part of the multifaceted pipeline resistance and divestment effort, earlier this year an Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation traveled to Norway and Switzerland to meet face to face with bank representatives from financial institutions invested in DAPL and parent company, Energy Transfer Partners. Facilitated by the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, the delegation was initiated by grassroots Indigenous women who were harmed by and/or observed human rights and Indigenous rights abuses in North Dakota, and through the subsequent and continued persecution of Water Protectors.
In Norway, the advocacy of the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation helped push DNB bank to sell their $331 million dollar credit line to DAPL, following strong advocacy efforts from many groups, and an independent investigation in which DNB affirmed the violation of Indigenous rights and failure to properly consult the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
In collaboration with Norwegian Sami people, members of the Delegation are continuing advocacy efforts calling for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global—one of the few Norwegian financial institutions still heavily invested in companies like Energy Transfer Partner, Sunoco Logistics, Marathon Petroleum, Enbridge and Phillips 66—to immediately exclude Energy Transfer Family of Partnerships, DAPL, and other DAPL related companies from their investment universe.
As follow up to intensive meetings with Credit Suisse bank representatives in Switzerland, a detailed letter has recently been sent to the bank clarifying exactly why they must immediately divest from DAPL related companies; offering an in-depth analysis of the rights violations that occurred at Standing Rock; and demanding from Credit Suisse corporate responsibility and accountability to its human rights policy.
The letter also analyzes and provides examples of the U.S. legal system's failure to protect, secure and guarantee human rights such as self-determination and Free, Prior and Informed Consent to Indigenous peoples, ultimately providing a stark picture of how resource wars against Indian people in their traditional homelands and territories continue in the U.S. to this day.
As the letter to Credit Suisse points out, the financial institution's continued banking relationship with Energy Transfer Partners, and the stated "provision of loans, the issuing of securities (notes) and advisory mandates" violates the bank's current policies and guidelines in regard to human rights and indigenous rights relating to:
- Not financing or advising oil and gas companies against which credible evidence exists of involvement in such grave human rights abuses as forced labor, employment of children, or the use of violence against local communities and indigenous groups
- Public involvement, consultation, and disclosure
- Water contamination and use
- Prevention, preparedness, and response for oil spills, gas leaks, or both
- Worker and community health and safety
- Violations of local laws
The letter concludes as follows:
"Credit Suisse has stated that, 'Credit Suisse takes concerns about the DAPL seriously and will consider them in the further development of internal guidelines.' However, if Credit Suisse took human rights and indigenous rights abuses seriously they would have already complied with, and implemented their current human rights policy and publicly withdraw its credit facilities and end its banking relationship with the Energy Transfer Family of Partnerships. Credit Suisse needs to show that its commitment to sustainability and human rights is more than mere lip service, obscuring complicity and contribution to human rights, environmental rights, and indigenous rights abuses in the United States."
Divestment advocates worldwide are turning to financial institutions like Credit Suisse and calling for accountability such as the letter demands. In this vein, the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation to Norway and Switzerland helps expose the complex interplay and interdependency between states, corporations and banks in the harmful extraction and exploitation of natural resources of Indigenous peoples' territories and lands.
Indigenous women and their allies are illuminating the deleterious but key role banks play in maintaining the unjust design of a fossil fuel economy detrimental to their survival, and are working to stop the pipelines at the financial source. Their quest for justice and accountability from banks for human rights violations is imperative not only to Indigenous peoples and Nations, but to American citizens and global civil society.
The aim is not only divestment, but also economic paradigm shifts that include investments in renewable energy technology, sustainability, and just, transparent, and accountable banking institutions; economic systems that are not detrimental to Indigenous peoples rights or the environment.
Through the ongoing efforts of Water Protectors, the Standing Rock movement continues to shine a fierce light on the historic and contemporary indigenous rights and human rights violations occurring at the hands of state and corporate actors, and has made it clear once again that the transition to a just and dignified future must be one that upholds human rights, sustainable renewable energy, climate justice, and respect for indigenous peoples self-determination. The torch and spirit of the movement for water, life and rights will continue as people's movements around the world seek justice, truth, accountability and transformation.
Michelle Cook is a Dineh (Navajo) human rights lawyer and a current SJD candidate at the University of Arizona's Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program.
Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International.
With determination and courage, a delegation of Indigenous women from Standing Rock and their allies who observed and experienced rights violations in North Dakota due to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, recently traveled to Norway and Switzerland to share their on-the-ground experiences as Indigenous women who are living and working in communities directly impacted by fossil fuel development and infrastructure.
Norway and Switzerland are home to some of the largest financial institutions investing in DAPL and in corporations that orchestrate pipeline projects, despite global and national reputations as countries with high ethical standards and respect for human rights.
Seeking to make known the impacts being felt in North Dakota as a direct result of the European investments, members of the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation engaged with representatives of financial institutions and government leaders, civil society groups and public forums to provide first-hand testimony on the impacts of extractive industries, oil spills and contamination in their homelands—as well as to raise urgent calls for international solidarity, justice, divestment from dirty energy and a transition to renewable energy.
"Making Indigenous human rights abuses visible is critical in ending human rights abuses against Indigenous peoples. Indigenous women deserve spaces where they can share their personal testimonies regarding the impacts of extractive industries on their lands, lives, bodies and human rights," Michelle Cook, Diné human rights lawyer and a founding member of the of the Water Protector Legal Collective at Standing Rock, explained in advance of the divestment trip, "this delegation provides the rare opportunity for Indigenous women to meet face to face with the international banks who fund DAPL and oil and gas extraction in their traditional territories."
In Norway, the delegation met with Den Norske Bank (DNB); the Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund Global, commonly known as the Norwegian Oil Fund; the Norwegian Parliament; a delegation of Sami Indigenous peoples of the region; and with Norway's Sami President, Vibeke Larsen.
The delegation members provided compelling and graphic testimony during each of their meetings, calling for full divestment and withdrawal of support by international financiers of DAPL and conveying in detail the militarization and abuses of law enforcement at Standing Rock, which include the use of attack dogs, mace, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, intrusive surveillance, water cannons and other physical violence against those involved in nonviolent direct actions based in traditional prayer, freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.
"The inevitable pipeline break on the river will result in catastrophic contamination of the water supply for 17 million people downstream, including our people. This sends a direct message that our people are expendable," explained Standing Rock Sioux leader and former tribal historic preservation officer, Waste' Win Young, making known to the banks that her people would not be deterred in their work to maintain "a physical and spiritual presence on our ancestral lands."
"This movement has and always will be guided by prayer and love. Wóčhekiye. Wóthehila. Wówauŋšila. Prayer. Love. Compassion." Young explained.
In their testimonies the women called for justice and rule of law, drawing upon the recent report from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which confirms that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had been the subject of violation of international Indigenous and human rights law due to the failure of processes of consultation and consent affirmed and recognized by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which has been adopted by both the governments of Norway and Switzerland.
The delegation advocated for the Norwegian Oil Fund to change their guidelines and standards to properly address Indigenous and human rights abuses and, while the women were in Norway, DNB bank fully divested its $331 million USD credit line to DAPL. Through inputs from diverse groups and an independent investigation, DNB had confirmed the lack of consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux and the violation of Indigenous rights.
The presence of the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation in Norway helped tipped the scales for the DNB divestment and during the delegation meeting with the bank, the women spoke out to encourage the bank to advocate for the other 15 international banks engaged in DAPL and the Norwegian Oil Fund to follow their example.
When the DNB representatives were asked by delegation members if they would invest in the controversial Keystone XL pipeline resurrected under the Trump administration, they flatly stated that after their experience with Standing Rock, they would not touch Keystone.
Indeed, the movement to pull funding from the Dakota Access Pipeline is gaining traction, with cities, tribes and individuals across the world removing over five billion dollars of DAPL investments, according to public statistics collected by the DeFundDAPL collective.
"In the 21st century, an investment in dated, entrenched, dirty fossil fuels is an investment against our children and our future. Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of the many harms associated with extractive industry, our communities are impacted first and worst. We must break the cycle of oil dependency and justly transition to a green economy," urged delegation member Tara Houska, an Anishinaabe tribal attorney, national campaigns director of Honor the Earth and former advisor on Native American affairs to Bernie Sanders.
In their meetings, delegation members also spoke about the traditional role women hold as protectors of water in their communities and the responsibility each person has to care for the web of life. Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, Oglala Lakota and Mdewakantonwan Dakota living and working on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, elucidated on this point:
"The connections between who we are as Lakota Oyate—our health, our lands and water, our spirituality, our self-empowerment and self-esteem—are deeply rooted; the actions we take to protect our land and water, our future and our children's water can only help us all. We all have the power—wowasake—within us to make a difference in this world."
Following strong advocacy in Norway, the delegation received requests to travel to Switzerland to continue work to highlight human rights and Indigenous rights violations and demand pipeline divestment, arranging meetings with Credit Suisse bank and UBS, a Swiss global financial services company.
"The meeting with Credit Suisse fulfilled all my expectations of a bank that tries to pretend it is removed from the atrocities happening on the ground," explained Tara Houska, "that said, I think it was very powerful for them to see our faces first hand and to hear the experiences of people at Standing Rock and to know that their money is invested in the company that is creating this pipeline project and causing destruction to real people. We are in the era of renewable energy; we have alternatives to the fossil fuel industry. We are asking the Swiss people to stand with us and to recognize that the actions they take affect others around the world and that simply because it's out of sight and out of mind does not mean that this is not actually happening. Divestment is the next wave of direct action against these corporations."
Autumn Chacon, a Diné artist, water protector and divestment delegate commented further:
"Here we have one of the most powerful banks in the world, doing business with unethical corporations in the U.S. who have undermined the law and human rights. Credit Swiss bank wants to relinquish any direct tie to genocide of American Indians, however in this case, we all see the bank as the enabler of the abuser."
Credit Suisse bank has agreed to a follow-up communication with the delegation in two months time after an internal discussion process for reviewing and applying their respective guidelines.
As delegate Dr. Sarah Jumping Eagle reported:
"Credit Swiss was receptive to our description of the human rights abuses that occurred during the protests. Yet, they are still in denial about their direct financing of the corrupt Energy Transfer Partner Corporation and its role in the Dakota Access pipeline project. Credit Swiss is attempting to distance themselves from these violations of Indigenous rights and human rights abuses. On a positive note, they said that they would review their internal policies and procedures to take into account Indigenous and human rights."
The Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation was organized and facilitated by the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International in response to the leadership and request of frontline Indigenous women seeking financial divestment from DAPL and other fossil fuel developments which threaten the lives, rights and cultural survival of their nations and peoples.
As has been demonstrated everyday on-the-ground at Standing Rock and during the divestment delegation—Indigenous women are the backbone and future of their tribal nations and now more than ever, it is essential that we stand with frontline women as they act for protection of water and land, a transition to clean energy and a halt to escalating climate change.
The various bank and government representatives who heard the women speak will not be the same again after hearing first-hand experiences of rights violations and the women's demands for no more fossil fuel extraction on their lands, respect for Indigenous rights and sovereignty, human rights and the rights of nature.
Globally, it is time for financial institutions to listen to the voices of Indigenous women leaders and their allies as they call for accountability to people and planet. Delegation members, WECAN and diverse leaders across the U.S. and around the world will continue divestment advocacy and actions until there are genuine results founded in justice and care for the futures of all of our children. Together, we must fight to restore the health of our communities, divest from dirty energy, invest and transition to renewable energy and build the just world we seek.
Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International and serves on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. She was asked to organize and facilitate the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegation and is the author of the award-winning book Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature. Follow on Twitter @WECAN_INTL.
But in the face of such violence and intimidation, the growing movement against new fossil fuels will not be intimidated, it will only grow.
The latest violence was Thursday morning. In highly distressing scenes for anyone who has been involved fighting the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, highly militarized law enforcement—some carrying guns, riot gear and backed up by Humvees and bulldozers—moved into the Oceti Sakowin camp near the pipeline route.
10 Arrested as Deadline to Evacuate #DakotaAccessPipeline Camp Passes https://t.co/sHlRz47dsz @MarkRuffalo @greenpeaceusa @350 @NRDC #NoDAPL— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1487863187.0
Their aim was to officially shut it down and clear it. Only the last hundred or so defiant protectors remained. Some 46 people, including journalists, veterans, elders and other water protectors who had remained were said to have been arrested. Many others had left the camp voluntarily the day before, marching in solidarity arm in arm out of the camp.
Last week, the North Dakota governor had given a deadline of mid this week for people to leave. By Wednesday, the camp had been surrounded by police and military. As they left many people burned their tents, teepees and shelters in a symbolic act of defiance.
Chase Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said: "It reminded me of pictures or maybe memory in my DNA, of the massacres, when you see teepees and structures burned; it was extremely traumatic, a heavy feeling."
There was outrage at the over-use of force Thursday. "Knifing tipis and pointing loaded rifles at the occupants. It's the 1800s all over again," tweeted Ruth Hopkins, a former judge for the Spirit Lake Nation and Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.
Knifing tipis and pointing loaded rifles at the occupants. It's the 1800s all over again. https://t.co/ODIh9sOt1d— Ruth Hopkins (@Ruth Hopkins)1487877759.0
The activities by the authorities Thursday are just not acceptable.
However, from the ashes of the camp, comes a new empowered movement that will resist this horrendous Trump assault on the environment and on Indigenous rights.
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said the forced evacuation was a "violent and unnecessary infringement on the constitutional right of water protectors to peacefully protest and exercise their freedom of speech."
However, Goldtooth, added: "Our hearts are not defeated. The closing of the camp is not the end of a movement or fight. It is a new beginning. They cannot extinguish the fire that Standing Rock started."
4 Pipeline Fights Intensify as Dakota Access Nears Completion https://t.co/rlsFAW4JIR @Indigeneity @BoldNebraska— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1487558703.0
Others were equally angry: James T. Meggesto, a member of the Onondaga Indian Nation, told Salon:
Today is a sad reminder that at its core, this dispute has always been about environmental justice and the lack thereof in Indian country, because once again Indian people are literally being forced to accept a dangerous oil pipeline directly upstream of their water supply that was rejected by a non-Indian community for precisely this reason.
After watching the events unfold, Chairman Frazier of the Cheyenne River Sioux said:
What I have witnessed today is pretty sickening. Really disappointed. Like in our history we will rise again. I feel more defiant than ever. There are a lot of things that North Dakota have done that they need to pay for. To destroy sacred sites, ceremonial lodges. They have to be held accountable … They have no respect for our way of life and for all the people in the camp.
In a defiant post on Facebook Thursday, one of the activists and community organizer, Lyla June, said:
They might have buried things, but we have planted seeds and we have planted seeds all across the world. We have inspired and awakened people to see what in a new way. To see what as life. We have united things that were never united before...
She continued:
We united people from all races behind a common dream and that is a win ... And we fought in a manner that was so beautiful, with so much honor and dignity .. The other win is that we gave our bodies on the line, we fought in courts, we fought financially, we have done everything in our power to protect our water and that is a win. We are going to continue by taking the money from Wells Fargo and other banks.
And as if on cue, Thursday the German bank BayernLB, which has $120 million invested in the pipeline announced they will "withdraw from the financing contract at the earliest possible date." Furthermore, they will not be renewing their contract with Energy Transfer Partners.
The move came after a petition had been handed to the bank with more than 300,000 signatures opposing the pipeline.
So the camp may be gone. The fight will continue. The seeds have been planted. And they will continue to grow. We will resist Trump and his fossil fuel cronies. This is not the end, just a new beginning of resistance.