Pipe Dreams of Freedom: Extermination Policies Cannot Be Reformed

Welcome back to the special summer series of the IfRFA Newsletter. We are thankful to Mica Standing Soldier for writing this edition! If you missed our last newsletter by Marlene Berroa Rodriguez, you can read that here.
   
      In 1953, my grandfather returned from the Korean war a decorated veteran. As he bussed his way back to the Pine Ridge Reservation, he stopped at a restaurant. A large sign hung on the front doors; in black paint it read, “No Dogs or Indians Allowed.” He ripped the purple heart pinned to his chest and threw it to the ground. Nearly 70 years later, overt disdain for Indigenous People is alive and well. Earlier this year a business owner in Rapid City, South Dakota announced via Facebook, “We will no longer allow any Native American on property,” following an altercation between two Native men at her hotel. 
 
      Within the first hundred years of contact with Europeans, an estimated 55 million Indigenous people perished from massacre and disease (often used as biochemical warfare). Some historians estimate that number closer to 100 million. Despite surviving thousands of years undisturbed, Indigenous tribes and their traditions met near extinction after only several hundred years of contact with western society. The remaining populations would experience a genocidal campaign from the US government intent on extermination. Efforts included mass killings, disease, forced relocation, slavery, sexual violence, boarding schools, and human trafficking. 
 
      While the rhetoric of federal policies have attempted to move away from virulent racism, the modern day relationship between the government and tribal nations reflects long-standing colonial subjugations of Indigenous sovereignty. Mainstream media surrounding Indigenous rights and federal policy revolve around the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Historically, the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 partially imposed the Bill of Rights on tribal reservations, however it lacked an explicit clause protecting individual religious freedoms. Up until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, Indigenous people faced criminalization if they practiced their traditional religions. The majority of First Amendment litigation in Indigenous and tribal contexts centers around the nitty gritty of religious freedom. However, the legacy of colonization overshadows every aspect of Indigenous sovereignty. 
 
      In recent years, over 100 anti-protest bills have been introduced or enacted across the United States. This legislation directly violates the promised First Amendment protections for Indigenous people. Protesters (often referred to as water protectors) gather to resist pipeline constructions and other natural resource extraction that have proven to devastate surrounding environments and sacred lands. Pipelines and other extraction sites have been deemed, “critical infrastructure,” and thus usurp the fundamental freedoms of speech, association, and religion guaranteed in the First Amendment. Tribes, activists, and communities vulnerable to the effects of natural resource extraction now face legal consequences for speaking up and standing their ground. In South Dakota, legislature approved SB 151, heightening the penalties for protesting near oil and gas pipelines. These penalties and others across the US reaffirm the government’s commitment to extermination. The message is clear, “We will take your land, poison your water, silence your concerns, ignore your traditions, and punish your resistance.”  
 
      Indigenous sovereignty has been under attack since the beginning of contact with Europeans. The First Amendment will always fail to represent or protect Indigenous people, because Indigenous liberties run counter to Anglo-American ideologies. The epochal black feminist, bell hooks, said it best: the US upholds a system of “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” American freedom is structured by the logic of individualization and property ownership and thus contradicts Indigenous traditions rooted in community and land. Because so many tribal nations practice religions that worship the land as much as any holy entity, the government’s objectives of development will always threaten the freedom of religion. Further, every policy and law set forth by the US originated from the goal of extermination. There can be no reconciliation under a lens that codifies the physical, mental, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Indigenous identity.  Mica Standing Soldier is a J.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota Law School. At the heart of her advocacy is a collective community pursuit towards justice. In addition to school, Mica clerked at the Legal Rights Center, providing legal and community support during the historic trial of Derek Chauvin. She is an enrolled citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. 
 
Learn more about IfRFA’s current cohort at: https://ifrfa.org/fellows.