In remote North Dakota USA, indigenous people, native Americans, have been trying to to stop the building of a massive oil pipeline, around 2000 km long, which they realise poses a threat to their heritage, sacred sites and resources, water resources especially. The Sioux of the Standing Rock Reservation have been joined by other native Americans, some 200 tribes and some environmentalists too. The Sioux point out they are not ‘protesters’; they are ‘protectors’. The gathering of so many native Americans, their show of pride and dignity in spite of hundreds of years of murderous dispossession and oppression has no doubt taken many people by surprise.
The Standing Rock Sioux and those who have joined them have been met with violence from private contractors , including pepper spray and attack dogs, one of the contractors being the large British multinational security contractor G4S.
Reporter Amy Goodman was issued with a warrant for witnessing and filming. Officials did not want the outside world to see what was happening.
There is much sympathy and solidarity among Palestinians for the Standing Rock Sioux.
Palestinians have sent messages of support. They too are indigenous people who have been struggling for decades , and continue to struggle, to save their cultural heritage, land and water. Palestinian journalists are often arrested and even attacked violently. Many are being held under administrative detention.
Palestinian interest in native Americans is not new. Journalist Ramzy Baroud of Palestine Chronicle recalls being a teenager in a refugee camp in Gaza, reading and sharing with others, from a Palestinian newspaper, the Mahmoud Darwish poem Speech of the Red Indian . “Many tears were shed on that day, mostly because we all knew too well that we, in fact, were the ‘Red Indians.’ They were us.”
As for G4S, they are notorious in Palestine for servicing Israel’s checkpoints, its occupation and security forces, and the prisons and detention centers where 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners are held and tortured.
There is a New Zealand connection, it’s a globalised world after all, that we should be ashamed of and do something about. Our Superfund invests in G4S. Please bring this to the attention of MPs and request that they ask the Guardians of the Superfund to divest. We can do better as a people than profit from attacks on native Americans, opposing massive oil pipelines , better than profit from mass incarceration of Palestinians.
I’d like to see NZ Superfund be truly ethical investment portfolio. In that non-violent way, our country could be a force for good. We need to be globalised not just financially but globalised ethically. We need to be able to marvel at the dignity of the Standing Rock Sioux, as Ramzy Baroud has done.
“To see them standing once more, along with their families, riding their feather-draped horses and fighting for their very identity is a cause for celebration. It brings hope to oppressed people all across the world that the human spirit will never be destroyed.”
Lois and Martin are retired teachers who met and married in Malawi Africa. They share an interest in international environment and justice issues. They are specially concerned about the plight of the Palestinians, having been to the Middle east and made friends with Palestinians and Israeli human rights activists too.
People power is moral power that Corporates and Governments have no equal that is moral.
If the Palestinians are supporting them, then you know their cause is tarnished.
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