Dave Archambault, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, spoke at North Dakota State on the history of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in conjunction with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Archambault and his wife are alumni of NDSU. He said in his time at NDSU he felt “a little bit different.” He went into detail about historical facts surrounding the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, starting with the connection with the Great Sioux Nation and its leader, Sitting Bull.
As he told it, Sitting Bull was not ready to conform to European ideal and culture, so instead changing their ways, he took his people to Canada, eventually taking them back to the great plains. The federal government at the time saw Sitting Bull as a threat, and therefore began to implement a policy that would kill him and integrate his people.
The chairman’s history lesson was one that originated from his childhood in Pine Ridge, he later moved to Standing Rock.
He pointed out a couple differences between the two environments.
In Pine Ridge it was normal for the native language to be spoken and to have long hair, while at Standing Rock everybody seemed to speak English and have short cut hair.
The assimilation seen at Standing Rock can be attributed to the boarding schools that Europeans would take Native American children too. These children had been taken away from their families. The schools cut their hair and discouraged the children from speaking their native language.
Today, long after the boarding schools, Standing Rock has about 15,000 members inhabiting its land which about the size of Connecticut.
Archambault described the current conditions of Standing Rock as being a product of federal policy. “When we first had contact we knew there was no such thing as ownership,” he said. Owning things wasn’t a concept that they worried about at the time, as they shared the space they inhabited.
They also associated every moving thing with having a soul, which created a deep sense of gratitude for the land and the resources it provided.
However, the chairman also compared that mindset to that of the white Europeans, disassociating it with its spirit turning it into merely a place to gather resources.
The first time the federal government entered the land to asked for a piece of it in 1851 a peace treaty which the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe signed, despite not being able to fully comprehend English. This treaty provided them with a boundary; a place they knew was sacred.
However, in 1868, that treaty would be broken for land. This resulted in altering the peace treaty to say that for a resolution to pass, three-fourths of the men must agree to it.
Despite this new portion of the treaty, it was once again broken by the white man in 1877 when gold was discovered in the Black Hills.
Native Americans were finally considered citizens of the U.S. in 1924, which meant their voices could be heard on ballots. This also meant that young men could be sent off to fight in America’s wars.
In 1914 they created their own constitution; however, in 1934, the Feds gave them a different constitution to live by, creating forced dependency, according to Archambault. This forcing of a hand was nothing new and continues today.
Archambault also spoke about the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and how there is a verbatim record from 2014 that states this opposition.
However, Archambault acknowledges that the federal government benefits more from fossil fuels than from the Sioux Tribe, and that this is a fight against corporations.
He says that it’s “Standing Rock against this power. What can you do? What are we going to do?”
Archambault believes that no matter what happens, there is some good to come from the controversy of the Pipeline.
He says that many cities across the nation, including New York, have voiced their solidarity to Standing Rock, and that bringing awareness to the issue is a victory in and of itself in a way.
He said he wishes that citizens are making conscious decisions about how their actions impact the world around them in day to day life.