At Standing Rock, women lead fight in face of Mace, arrests and strip searches
(a lengthy, enlightening, and thoroughly depressing read. note that it is from the guardian, that american media are not covering this)
At Standing Rock, women lead fight in face of Mace, arrests and strip searches
Native American women are leading the movement against the Dakota Access pipeline, but say they face cruel and inhumane treatment from police
Prairie McLaughlin said she has daily flashbacks – “daymares” – about the police.
Sitting inside a small tipi where she is camped out while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline, she took a drag of her cigarette and recounted how officers took her to a North Dakota jail last month where, she says, a group of male and female guards forcibly removed her clothes when she refused to strip in front of them. “I’m beyond traumatized,” the 33-year-old Native American woman said through tears. But, when asked if she was prepared to keep defending the Standing Rock tribe’s water, McLaughlin’s face hardened. “Everyone needs to stand up,” she said.
McLaughlin, the daughter of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a Standing Rock Sioux tribe member and founder of the Sacred Stone camp, is one of hundreds of women who have led the growing movement to stop the $3.7bn project threatening their land and culture. Her friends have been arrested and subjected to what they describe as cruel and inhumane treatment. Many say that female “water protectors”, in some cases drawing on matriarchal tribal structures, are the core spiritual leaders strategizing how to block the “black snake” pipeline and planning actions to stand up to a police force that has gone to great lengths to defend an oil corporation.
Prairie McLaughlin, who says she was forced to strip in front of male and female guards.
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Native women say they are protecting the basic human right to clean water. But for some indigenous activists, the internationally recognized movement has become a larger fight against a history of misogyny, racism and abuse by law enforcement.
‘Native lives matter’ Indigenous women have long had a fraught relationship with American police – whether in the form of questionable fatal shootings or law enforcement inaction in the face of human trafficking crises and sexual assault epidemics. “It’s always been happening,” McLaughlin said, but “people in the world see it now.”
Although indigenous rights are often ignored in the discussion of police brutality, studies have shown that Native Americans are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by law enforcement, prompting some to adopt the rallying cry, “Native lives matter”, a reference to the Black Lives Matter movement.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/04/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-standing-rock-women-police-abuse