Water is Life - stories from Standing Rock, USA

An environmentalist reflects on an indigenous-led water protection anti-pipeline movement

Mni wiconi – Water is Life.

Join Barbara Koth as she describes the lessons and vision she drew from the Native American-led Standing Rock water protection anti-pipeline action. Barb visited Sacred Stone camp in North Dakota (US), and stayed involved with the movement, including Adelaide initiatives, until the closure of the camps and Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) approval after President Trump’s election. From the cultural training required to stay onsite and the DAPL financial divestment campaign, to the pressures for a new kind of Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), she’ll share the movement’s ethic of ‘peaceful, prayerful protest.’ She’ll also detail what’s happened since and how the model has relevance for other campaigns in resistance to energy and mining extraction.

With acknowledgement of the traditional custodians of the land, the Lakota people of the Great Plains.