#NoDAPL

Native American and Indigenous Science, Fiction, and Futurisms

In the days leading up to the March for Science on Earth Day, April 22, 2017, more than eleven hundred Native American and Indigenous scientists, scholars, and allies endorsed the "Indigenous Science Statement for the March on Science," authored by four leading Native American scientists and scholars. In this statement, Robin Kimmerer, Rosalyn LaPier, Melissa Nelson, and Kyle Whyte emphasized the concept of Native American and Indigenous science as they encouraged "Indigenous people and allies to participate in the national march in DC or a satellite march." Naming the declaration "Let Our Indigenous Voices Be Heard," the authors insisted on the need to "engage the power of both Indigenous and Western science on behalf of the living Earth." Nelson further elaborated on the concept of Indigenous sciences in an interview: "To successfully address our world's pressing ecological issues, it is critical that we look to the multiple place-based and time-tested sciences of Indigenous peoples." The use of the term Indigenous science, like the multiple Indigenous science organizations — including the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs, and the Society Advancing Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science — that endorsed the March for Science, is itself a significant theoretical claim. The idea that Indigenous peoples practice sciences and have deep historical knowledge that is often "place-based" is an important intervention in a settler society predisposed to discount Indigenous perspectives. The critique of versions of Western science based on narrow, linear notions of progress and development inseparable from histories of colonialism and racial hierarchies is also noteworthy. The declaration goes on to argue that both Indigenous and Western sciences, working together for the sustainability of the earth, are necessary at the current conjuncture.

In the opening, the authors emphasize that although "Western Science is a powerful approach, it is not the only one." Calling the Earth Day event a "march not just for Science but for Sciences," they remember that "long before Western science came to these shores, there were Indigenous scientists here": "Native astronomers, agronomists, geneticists, ecologists, engineers, botanists, zoologists, watershed hydrologists, pharmacologists, physicians and more — all engaged in the creation and application of knowledge which promoted the flourishing of both human societies and the beings with whom we share the planet." This history of Indigenous science is relevant to our present, they insist, because it "supported indigenous culture, governance and decision making for a sustainable future — the same needs which bring us together today." It also offers "a wealth of knowledge and a powerful alternative paradigm by which we understand the natural world and our relation to it," providing "key insights and philosophical frameworks for problem solving that includes human values." The latter are indispensable for facing "challenges such as climate change, sustainable resource management, health disparities and the need for healing the ecological damage we have done." Their demands include "greater recognition and support for tribal consultation and participation in the co-management, protection, and restoration of our ancestral lands" as well as "enhanced support for inclusion of Indigenous science in mainstream education, for the benefit of all." In these ways, the authors and signers of this document "envision a productive symbiosis between Indigenous and Western knowledges that serve[s] our shared goals of sustainability for land and culture" while emphasizing that "this symbiosis requires mutual respect for the intellectual sovereignty of both Indigenous and Western sciences."

In this chapter, I build on scholarship in Native American and Indigenous studies and American studies, cultural forms produced by social movements disseminated through the Internet, and journalism and other media to further elaborate on the possibilities for such a "productive symbiosis" as well as the concepts of Indigenous science, fiction, and futurisms that are crucial for confronting the imminent disaster of climate change today. I also suggest that Indigenous science, fiction, and futurisms have converged to shape struggles over the DAPL as well as other struggles over water, oil, and resource extraction throughout the world.

From late spring through fall 2016, while the candidates for U.S. president failed to address climate change, a series of major events in the history of imagining the future of climate change was taking place. On April 1, tribal citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and other Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota citizens founded a spirit camp along the proposed route of the 1,172-mile DAPL. They objected not only to the pipeline but also to the use of the word "Dakota" to name it and the company that hoped to transport fracked oil from the Bakken oil fields across three states to refineries in Illinois. Dakota Access, LLC is a subsidiary of the Dallas-based company Energy Transfer Partners, which owns and operates more than 62,500 miles of natural gas and liquids pipelines. Fracked oil is created by hydraulic fracturing of tar sands and is more volatile and damaging to local ecosystems than conventional oil extraction. There are huge gaps in our knowledge of how spilled tar sands oil behaves in water and fracked oil may be more corrosive to pipeline systems than oil. Naomi Klein reports that "a growing body of independent, peer-reviewed studies is building the case that fracking puts drinking water, including aquifers, at risk." Evidence also suggests that fracking causes small earthquakes. There are significant reasons, then, to worry about Energy Transfer Partners' pipeline, which passes under the Missouri River. This corporation has powerful friends, however: Trump has significant stock holdings invested in the pipeline and CEO Kelcy Warren donated hundreds of thousands to Trump, the Trump Victory Fund, and the Republican National Committee in 2016.

To provide the material basis for resisting Energy Transfer Partners' pipeline, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, the tribe's historic preservation officer, cofounded the Sacred Stone Camp on her land in April 2016. The camp was called I?ya? Wakhá?agapi Othí, translated as Sacred Rock, "which was the pre-colonial name of the Cannonball area," and became the site of emergence for "a historic grassroots resistance movement" that was "determined to stop the pipeline through prayer and nonviolent direct action." When Allard heard construction would start on the pipeline, which would be routed near her water well and her son's grave, she posted a video message on Facebook...