"Put this into perspective that folks rushed to support #nodapl resistance yet perpetuated erasure of sacred lands and water struggles right where they live. This isn't to say Lake Oahe (the sacred confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri River) didn't warrant critical support, but to contextualize the larger struggles to defend the sacred and protect water.
Anti-colonial struggle necessitates an understanding that the frontline is everywhere. It measures and calculates how colonial power operates. If we don't build these understandings into our struggles, we risk the momentum ebbing right where Idle No More left its watermark.
Without meaningfully engaging in sacred sites defense at once as struggle against capitalism and colonialism (add racism and cis-heteropatriarchy to boot), we risk a not so distant future where we'll have people driving hybrids through South Mountain on Loop 202 to ski on shit-snow at Arizona Snowbowl on the Sacred Peaks while wearing #nodapl or "Defend the Sacred" t-shirts they bought at an Indigenous Peoples' Day event weeks prior.
This particular brand of superficial activism and anti-colonial posturing has become more prevalent post-Standing Rock. Indigenous Peoples' Day, as a process of collusion with occupying state forces, risks becoming a colonial patriotic ritual more than anything that amounts to liberation."
- Klee Benally, "No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred, page 275
