#NoDAPL: Social Media, Empowerment, and Civic Participation at Standing Rock

Abstract

The struggle for environmental and social justice within American Indian communities is one that has been ongoing since the beginning of United States history, but the main catalyst to effect change and to promote and disperse the American Indian narrative has emerged through the power of social media in today's hyperconnected society. This article examines the power of social media to effect change, as well as a hyperconnected society's ability to empower historically disadvantaged groups that have often been misrepresented within traditional media outlets. The historic movement occurring at Standing Rock, North Dakota, and the #NoDAPL protests illustrates the capacity of social media to galvanize individuals to become changemakers as well as create a vast support network within a population that might otherwise remain uninformed or unaware of media misrepresentations. The role of libraries as support systems within communities and the responsibility of libraries to provide unbiased and freely available information within a hyperconnected society are also discussed.

Sacred Sites Protection and Indigenous Women’s Activism: Empowering Grassroots Social Movements to Influence Public Policy. A Look into the “Women of Standing Rock” and “Idle No More” Indigenous Movements

“…The discussion above also calls for a holistic approach where Indigenous Peoples-and Indigenous women-are informed and active participants of the policies that so closely affect them, under UNDRIP and CEDAW (Tomaselli 2017). Modern technologies and social media provide democratic means for these grassroots social movements to be heard and empowered (Johnson 2017). The recent election to Congress of the first-ever Native American women in history, Deb Halaand and Sharice Davids, both supporters of, and supported by grassroots social movements, is a positive sign of a wind of change (Davids 2020;Deisen 2019).…”

“…The Women of Standing Rock (WSR) movement arose in the United States within the context of the Dakota Access Pipeline social movement-DAPL. Women, following the example of Lakota historian and activist LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, rose as protectors of the waters and the environment as an inherent aspect of Native American traditions and culture (Johnson 2017). Water, in particular, represents the essence of Indigenous communities' social, cultural, economic, and spiritual practices (Lane 2018;Parke-Sutherland 2018).…”

“…The Idle No More (INM) social movement first rose to prominence in Canada as a social media call to action by four native women in the region of Saskatchewan-home of 70 Indigenous First Nations (Government of Canada 2020; The Globe and Mail 2018). It has grown into an international grassroots social movement that brings forth similar claims to those of the DAPL social movement-that is, fostering Indigenous sovereignty, and protecting the environment and Indigenous sacred land (Johnson 2017;Nicolescu 2018). Both movements are described as "peaceful resistance" (Lane 2018).…”

Standing rock and the Indigenous commons

“…The significance of these allied cyber commons and their virtual media power was clearly demonstrated at several different moments throughout the autumn months. In October 2016, when the Morton County Sheriff's Department was allegedly monitoring Facebook check-ins to identify water protectors at the site, Facebook supporters were asked to "check-in" in a show of solidarity; over 1.5 million people responded (Kennedy, 2016in Johnson, 2017. Regardless of the effectiveness in curbing the police surveillance, as Deem argues, the mass check-ins reconstituted the virtual and the analog in tandem, providing a disembodied presence that lent visibility to the bodies on the ground in a very particular local place (Deem, 2019, p. 124).…”

Crowdsourcing a Current Events Exhibition on Community Activism Against DAPL

“…While, particularly initially, mainstream media did not cover this protest in great depth, Native American and alternative media sources, principally sources that distributed content through social media, covered the growing protest with growing intensity, associated with hashtags such as #NoDAPL, #WaterIsLife and #StandWithStandingRock (e.g. Dreyfuss ; Johnson ; Montana Journalism Review ; Steimer ). The coverage via social media of the protest was also diverse in its origins.…”