Water Protectors Were Right
A look back 10 years after the Water Protector movement at Standing Rock
This essay originally appeared in The Circle’s Summer 2026 issue.
The Water Protector movement at Standing Rock in 2016 was never merely a local protest against a pipeline—it was a struggle for the future of the planet. Looking back a decade later, the stakes of those encampments at the confluence of the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers feel even more monumental. And despite what has often felt like a series of setbacks since then, the Water Protector movement marked a paradigm shift.
2016 was a presidential election year defined by a profound national identity crisis, one that has had dire consequences for Indigenous people and for those who do not fit the mold of what counts as “belonging” to this country.
In the twilight months of the nation’s first Black presidency, a horrified public watched livestreamed images of militarized police unleashing spectacular violence against Water Protectors, deploying water cannons in freezing temperatures, attack dogs, tear gas, and concussion grenades. Democratic Party leadership had just crushed a populist left-wing insurgency that promised a path toward political change, offering instead a dynastic neoliberal war hawk—Hillary Clinton—as Obama’s successor. Meanwhile, a neofascist movement set its sights on something far larger than the White House: it sought to turn back the clock of history itself, returning the country to the halcyon days of white supremacy.
Soon after the outcome of the 2016 election, the ideological battle lines crystallized in the contrast between two slogans. On the frontlines of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Indigenous-led resistance looked forward, chanting what sounded like a planetary ultimatum: “Mni Wiconi! Water is life!” For there to be a future at all, Water Protectors had to confront the literal dinosaurs of the fossil fuel industry, forces intent on blocking the social and economic transformations necessary to survive ecological collapse. On the other side stood Donald Trump’s nostalgic call to “Make America Great Again.” After Trump came Joe Biden’s less inspiring declaration that “America’s back,” alongside his reassurance to wealthy donors that under his presidency, “nothing will fundamentally change.” Indigenous people sought to move toward a more livable future for everyone, but billionaire America had other plans.
Looking back, neither party offered a fundamental departure from the path of climate ruin and war. What remained on offer was either the same empire or a more openly menacing version of it. What followed were more wars, a pandemic that killed millions, a Palestinian genocide, and the continued rise of global temperatures. Indian Country fared no better. The last decade of alternating Democratic and Republican leadership has also seen a precipitous decline in life expectancy for American Indians, falling from about 71 years to roughly 65, with some states like South Dakota reporting a median age of death of just 58. If those numbers were reported for U.S. adversaries such as Iran, Russia, or China, war hawks in Washington would already be calling to carpet bomb those responsible “back to the Stone Age” or overthrow the “authoritarian” regime in the name of human rights. But this is America. In true American excess, instead of meaningful change we get the short-sighted spectacle of election cycles that generate billions of dollars, sums exceeding the GDP of some nations. Such corporate party politics make long-term thinking and planning nearly impossible.
Anniversaries often seem arbitrary, whether marking a decade since the most significant Indigenous movement of a generation or commemorating 250 years since the founding of a settler republic built on genocide and the enslavement of entire peoples. Measuring progress within such timeframes can also feel futile. After all, Water Protectors were unable to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. And despite the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of formerly excluded populations, the problem of American empire has only expanded to a planetary scale, with more than 800 overseas military bases spanning the globe and the United States remaining one of the world’s leading drivers of fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis.
We are living in a moment of terrible danger, and the challenges facing this generation are daunting, to say the least. But the Water Protector movement at Standing Rock teaches us to have a deep historical perspective and to take the long view, like our ancestors before us. When I decided on the title for my book Our History Is the Future, which places the Water Protector movement at Standing Rock in historical perspective, my intention was to show how Indigenous peoples and, more specifically, the Oceti Sakowin were future-oriented. The revelation came to me when studying the Ghost Dance movement that spread like wildfire across our reservations during one of the darkest chapters of our history. While most histories emphasize the murderous outcome of the Ghost Dance movement—the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890—the visions, prayers, and prophecies embedded within it speak of the revitalization of Indigenous life and the return of the human, plant, and animal relatives taken from us. Our ancestors did more than die and suffer; they also dreamed and fought for an Indigenous future, and they did so in ways that we may never fully understand or appreciate.
This year also marks the 150-year anniversary of a U.S. military defeat by a Cheyenne-Arapaho-Lakota alliance. Accounts from that day show the U.S. military, under the leadership of George Armstrong Custer, dying while fleeing from superior Indigenous forces. The loss at the hands of people the United States called “primitive savages” remains both an embarrassment to the nation and a source of pride for Indigenous people. As Lakotas, we grow up with a pantheon of heroes like Tasunka Witko (Crazy Horse) and Tatanka Iyotake (Sitting Bull), who defeated the U.S. military but were later killed by their own relatives. Their lives and deaths are lessons for us today about the external and internal nature of our subjugation.
It would be wrong, however, to say the best days of our people are behind us or that they matter only to those of us born Lakota. While we look to the past for lessons, the Water Protectors’ call to fight for the Seven Generations to come is an act of solidarity with future relatives we do not yet know and a world we do not yet inhabit. This call has been taken up by and for people from all walks of life. And there are measurable gains from this movement. A 2021 study by the Indigenous Environmental Network found that Indigenous-led resistance against carbon extraction and infrastructure challenged one-quarter of carbon emissions from Canada and the United States. Indigenous people, though small minorities within both states, punch well above their weight class when it comes to climate justice. Because of the costs imposed by Standing Rock on the fossil fuel industry, corporations and local governments have become more hesitant to push through unpopular extractivist and carbon infrastructure projects, given the enormous expense of raising a police army to crush Indigenous resistance. They now have to think twice. The recent Lakota-led actions against drilling at the sacred site Pe’ Sla in He Sapa, the Black Hills, led the mining company to withdraw its project. And the Indigenous patrols against ICE terrorism in the Twin Cities showed that Water Protectors moved the frontline from rural to urban geographies and that land defense also included protecting one’s neighbors from federal invasion and occupation. Being a Water Protector is about being a good relative.
The Lakota elder and AIM activist Madonna Thunder Hawk once told me that she gave her life to the movement—participating in every major Red Power action from Alcatraz in 1969 to Wounded Knee in 1973 and even Standing Rock in 2016—to be a good ancestor to future generations. Water Protectors were right. We must have solidarity with the ancestors of the future by being good relatives and doing what’s right today.