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Shivani BeallDr. Suhr-SytsmaIndigenous Adolescence22 September 2016Chapter 12.5I feel grass and sand underneath my face as my eyes open to bright light. I do not look up, but I see feet and legs surrounding me, shuffling and stamping, and I feel dozens of bodies above me, periodically blocking the sunlight from my face. The legs are covered in jeans, the feet in Vans sneakers and Converse. Huh. Looks like something I’d wear. Am I not too far in the past Could I be in the present? Am I myself again? A hand reaches down in front of my nose, and I look up to see a face of a scrawny Indian kid, who can’t be much older than me, or Zits rather, looking down concernedly. He’s wearing big reflective sunglasses that make him look like a fly. I grab his wrist, and he pulls me to my feet. A strange sight greets me: a crowd of Indians holding signs with messages and illustrations scrawled on the white canvas. #noDAPL. That is the one word I see over and over. Is it a secret code? An acronym? Maybe it’s a clue as to where the hell I am. “You ok there, man?” Indian Kid asks “Sometimes the sun can make you feel a little faint.” He offers me a water bottle, which I take with a nod of thanks. Looking at his face, I catch a glimpse of my own reflection in his sunglasses before he turns away. Shit. I’m not Zits. I’m not even Indian. I’m a plain looking white dude, maybe in my 20s or 30s. I can’t do another situation where I have to hurt Indians, or they have to hurt me. I can’t do it. I try to calm my reeling thoughts and focus. I listen. Chanting. “Keep our water clean!” I hear again and again. “Respect our land! Oil is death!”Chanting? Angry chanting? Suddenly, it hits me: I’m at a protest. We are standing on one side of a barbed wire fence. Bulldozers and construction workers occupy the opposite side. They gouge deep scars in the land and churn up clouds of dust as I watch. Indians and white people. Construction in the middle of nowhere. In all the news stories and documentaries I’ve kept up with, I can’t remember hearing about a single protest like this one. That concerns me. I just want to know where and when I am. Indian Kid turns around to me again and says, pointing to the ground, “You dropped that stuff there. It looks important.” Puzzled, I just nod. On the ground are a yellow legal pad and some sort of recording device. Taking the boy’s word that they must be mine, I pick them up. I look first at the legal pad. Three lines of writing are scrawled on the top: Jake Goodman - Democracy Now Global NewsDakota Access Pipeline ProtestSeptember 3, 2016Holy shit. I’m in the future. I’m in the future! I’ve traveled to the past over and over, but being in the future seems way more unnatural. I whirl around half expecting to see the old white-haired doctor dude from Back to the Future. Am I Marty McFly or some shit? I chuckle nervously to myself at the ridiculous conclusions my mind is jumping to. I must slowly be going insane. No wonder I couldn’t think of a protest like this one. It hasn’t happened yet! I look down at the notepad again, my hands trembling. I’m a reporter. Wow, somehow I find that kind of ironic considering the historic events I’ve been a part of so far. Now it is my job to record this moment in history. I wonder if this protest will go down in history? I wonder if it is actually really important, and the world just doesn’t know it yet. I smile to myself. Maybe some poor bastard like me will travel back in time to this moment some day and will actually know what is going on because I (or Jake Goodman at least) documented it. Second line: Dakota Access Pipeline… DAPL… #noDAPL. Whatever the Dakota Access Pipeline is, these protesters are against it. I realize I might be able to use my occupation to get some answers. I turn on the spot, squinting against the midday sun, until I spot him.“Hey! Kid!” I shout, trotting towards Indian Kid. He turns around. “Hey, man,” he replies with a look of recognition and a smile. “What’s up?” “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier,” I say. Glancing quickly down at my notepad for confirmation of my name, I shake his hand. “I’m Jake Goodman from Democracy Now Global News. I was wondering if you could just give me a quick description of what’s going on here right now? You know, a soundbyte, just for the record?” I’m nervous. I don’t know if I sound credible at all. “Sure!” the kid says. He flashes a broad grin, obviously super pleased to have his fifteen seconds of fame. “Well, these guys over there,” he gestures to the construction workers on the other side of the fence, “they think they can just come onto our land, tear up the places that are significant to us, to the Standing Rock Sioux, and install an oil pipeline for their own profit.” I turn my recorder on. I figure the real Jake Goodman would appreciate me getting some of his work done. It’s my job anyways, I guess.“Well, yeah, this pipeline is going to pollute our river,” the boy continues. “And they haven’t gotten our tribe’s approval for any of this! They don’t have the right! We just want to show them that we won’t stand for it. We will fight as long and as hard as it takes.” The kid is passionate; he wants to be heard. The tribe he mentioned, Standing Rock Sioux, stirs something in my memory. A news article? No, a documentary I think. Anyways, maybe about 50 years ago, hundreds of families in the Standing Rock Sioux were displaced when Congress signed off on a dam to be built on the Missouri. It flooded their land and forced them out of their own homes. Now it’s happening again. They are being taken advantage of for the profit of the more powerful, their land destroyed so some fat, white, corporate fucks can line their pockets. I feel heat and anger welling up inside of me. They are being cheated. I feel cheated, too. It’s the fucking future and we’re still stuck in the past. I wonder if Jake Goodman the reporter would be objective right now, doing his job like he should. How could anyone be objective? Just as my fury feels like it’s about to boil over in my brain like scalding water overflowing a pot, I hear a scream of anger. At first, I think it’s me, but I soon realize it’s coming from the fence behind me. Every head swivels to the direction of the noise. One man, short and stocky, in a ripped, black t shirt and with tattoos covering his arms, is climbing the barbed wire fence towards the pipeline construction site, screaming a war cry. Immediately, hefty construction workers rush towards him, blocking his path. He picks up stones from the dusty ground and hurls them at workers and bulldozers. His action seems to spark the same fury and aggression in everyone on our side of the fence; two, then five, then dozens of bodies rush over the soon trampled barbed wire and join their comrade in arms. Shit. I don’t like how things are escalating. I feel as though I am watching the event unfolding in front of me through a poorly filmed action movie, a shaky camera skipping from one image in the scene to another. I see construction workers shouting urgently into their walkie talkies, Indians kicking equipment over, a middle-aged white woman, her gray hair down in two long braids, screaming in the face of a man in a hard hat, who towers over her. Suddenly, two large pickup trucks and two Jeeps emerge and roll quickly down the hill towards us. In the truck beds are large dogs. They look like rottweilers. Or maybe german shepherds. They’re big. The trucks come to a stop, and men and women with badges rush out, some of them holding the straining dogs on leashes, barely able to control the snarling creatures. The man with the black shirt and tattoos grabs a sign post and swings it at a dog that’s lashing out against its leash to bite him. The guard lets go of the leash, the dog springs forward, and the next thing I know, the man is clutching his hand over his arm and the dog is being restrained by the collar, its mouth and teeth covered in blood. I get a strange image in my head: a black and white photo of a big dog attacking a black protester in the 60s. It’s a famous photo, I think. I realize, with a wave of shame, that I have been frozen on the spot, watching everyone else take action in front of me. I sprint forward, still clutching my notepad and recorder, to try to help the injured man, but a pang of indecision hits me. Should I help them? Jake Goodman is not responsible for these people; they aren’t even his people. That Indian man is the one that started the violence in the first place, isn’t he? If he hadn’t stormed the fence, would he be bleeding? Probably not. I hesitate. But I know, from history, from our past, no one notices a nonviolent protest. People only notice blood. Without charging, without throwing stones and screaming and destroying, are they just a group of hippies causing a slightly annoying disturbance in the plans of more important people? No, we are important. We need to be noticed. So we need to be violent. Right? I don’t know what to do. This isn’t like any situation I’ve been in before, in my real life or in my time-traveling past. Or is it? What if this is just another battle in the string of violence and aggression I’ve seen? It’s 2016, there is no cavalry or cannons, but it’s war nonetheless. I’ve seen the wars of the past, and now the wars of the future. It evidently never ends, so what’s the use in trying to stop now? The thought makes me want to cry a little bit, but it’s not that hard to pretend sadness is anger. I’ve had plenty of practice. A small mob forms, heading in the direction of the dog who bit the Indian man, and I join in. We wave signs, using them not for protest, but as weapons, jabbing them in the direction of the guards and dogs. I hear screaming, drowned out warnings from the badged men, and then a cloud of vapor fills the air. My eyes and nostrils burn, and people around me clutch their faces. Pepper spray. I can’t stand the discomfort and pain, so I fall to my knees, hands rubbing desperately in my eyes. That only makes it worse. Get me out of here. The ground melts away. I’m falling. Or flying. I can’t tell the difference.Works ConsultedAlexie, Sherman. Flight. Black Cat, 2007. Democracy Now!. “Dakota Access Pipeline Company Attacks Native American Protesters with Dogs & Pepper Spray.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 3 September 2016. Web. 20 September 2016. Goodman, Amy and Denis Moynihan. “North Dakota vs. Amy Goodman: Journalism is not a crime.” Democracy Now!, 15 September 2016, . Accessed 21 September 2016. Healy, Jack. “‘I Want to Win Someday’: Tribes Make Stand Against Pipeline.” New York Times, 8 September 2016, . Accessed 15 September 2016.IndigenousEnviroNet (IENearth). “West side of Hwy6 where 2 days ago there was no pipe and now there is. Photo @mhawea #NoDAPL.” 17 September 2016, 4:52 PM. Tweet. ................
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