Indigenous sovereignty against settler colonialism: Jeff Gessas, ‘Praxis: The Standing Rock Water Protectors: Indigenous Sovereignty as a Refutation to Extractive Settler Colonialism’, in Masood Ashraf Raja, Nick T. C. Lu (eds), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

Indigenous sovereignty against settler colonialism: Jeff Gessas, ‘Praxis: The Standing Rock Water Protectors: Indigenous Sovereignty as a Refutation to Extractive Settler Colonialism’, in Masood Ashraf Raja, Nick T. C. Lu (eds), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice, 2023

20Oct23

Abstract: In 2016, at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, 400 Indigenous Nations and non-indigenous allies gathered in solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect Mni Sose, the Missouri River. They became known as the Water Protectors. Against these defenders stood a militarized line of “money protectors,” paramilitary groups and state police who were indistinguishable from one another with concealed faces and covered badges. The combined militarized force sought to continue the multi-century long project of settler colonization, occupation of Indigenous lands by force. The commoditization of land and water is a key feature of settler colonialism, which seeks to reduce land to inert resources for exploitation and extraction. For Indigenous people around the world, who have long-standing multigenerational ties to place, settler colonialism represents a violent process of disruption and erasure. The confluence of this logic of extraction and colonial violence is particularly clear in cases where Indigenous groups rally to protect traditional lands from exploitation such as the Water Protectors who faced the combined might of state and commercial violence. This chapter examines, through the words of the Water Protectors themselves, the political construction, significance, and power of the Stand at Standing Rock as a refutation of extractivist logics grounded in the movement to protect water.

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