Most people don't take seriously the fact that this country was stolen from the Native Americans, and that millions of them were killed in the process. It has been swept from the national consciousness as if it never occurred- or if it did, it was a noble act in the name of God, civilization and progress. The number of Indians who died because of what we called Manifest Destiny has always been a subject of debate among scholars, but I believe that the majority of informed historians and anthropologists now agree that between seven million and eighteen million indigenous people were living in what is today the continental United States when Columbus arrived in the New World. By 1924 there were fewer than 240,000 left; their ancestors had been victimized by centuries of disease, starvation and systematic slaughter. from Brando- Songs My Mother Taught Me -- with Robert Lindsay
Until recently, Native Americans were ignored by the mainstream culture. Some people thought they were all dead, others that they were mostly drunks, lost souls barely subsisting. Others idealized them, and saw them as "noble savages" whose esoteric ways could lead to a higher consciousness.
The heroic stand of the Standing Rock Lakota against EnergyTransfer, builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline, has changed all that. Mobilizing enormous support across racial and cultural lines, these Native Americans are now seen as leaders in the fight to save the planet.
There is a new generation of young activists, on and off the reservation. Like the passionate supporters of Bernie Sanders, they have a passion for protection of their sacred land and water. The mainstream media ignores them, as they did his campaign, but the word is spreading via social media. In protecting their portion of the upper Missouri River, the Standing Rock Water Protectors are also working for millions of Americans downstream, who rely on the mighty river for drinking water and irrigation water. The Missouri watershed covers most of the Midwest.
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