Politics of coalition at Standing Rock

Abstract

My research examines the politics of coalition surrounding the 2016-17 Standing Rock movement, led by Oceti Sakowin Tribal members, on the borders of the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The movement resisted the pipeline in the name of water protection, Indigenous sovereignty, protection of sacred burial grounds, treaty rights, climate justice, and more. Approximately ten months into the movement, it was halted by the US federal government and the pipeline was installed. This study engages with a range of qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with activists and content analysis of documents from TigerSwan, a private military and security contractor hired to surveil the movement. Findings show that for activists in the camps, placework, or place-based protest, strengthened coalition work across social differences, and enacted a "call and response" form of politics, based on shared callings to protect and shared critical responses to settler colonial-capital culture, specifically dispossession of land and property. Challenges in coalition work amongst activists were rooted in US settler colonial-informed racialized hierarchies of power, which perpetuate white supremacy and privilege. Finally, the militarized coalitional responses of public and private forces, specifically the use of racialized ideologies, militarized tactics and operations, and overt violent actions and arrests, was excessive, generated a diffusion of accountability, and inflicted harm and trauma upon activists at Standing Rock.