But this story is about so much more than a proposed pipeline route.
We will try to tell it in a short series of articles that will begin at the beginning of a search for information. The narrative will morph into empathy for a land and people that time seems to have forgotten.
And so we end the story where it should have begun.
As the sun was setting over the Sitting Bull memorial at Fort Yates we reflected on the knowledge that Sitting Bull won the battle at Little Big Horn but his people eventually lost the war against colonial rule.
"We woke up and we realized we lost it."
Treaties have been summarily ignored, and we spoke of this with Chase Iron Eyes as the Strawberry Moon rose. He told us he would have a statement for President Obama on YouTube and we will share that in our next installments in this series.
We talked about the Lakota legend of The Trickster and how the people were lured from the safety of the wind caves thousands of years ago to face a life of misery, but that the true measure of a people is their ability to deal with adversity and challenges.
It is the same challenge that the white nation faces. But the white nation has no real ancestral ties to the land. The land is expendable. And therein lie the conflict and the potential answers.
Sitting Bull said this.
What treaty have the Lakota made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they ever kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Dakota owned the world"where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?
Perhaps if the white nation would ask these same questions, white society would not be facing the collapse of society on the northern plains.
Who owns the land?
Who owns the night sky? Who will protect the health of all nations?
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