USA: Indianer-Kriege und Bedrohung Heiliger Orte der Sioux-Indianer bedroht (aktualisiert)

What if the Sioux Nation decided to build a pipeline through
Arlington Cemetery? This question from Faith Spotted Eagle — who lacks a
Ph.D. in comparative religion and who would never be employed to teach
the phenomenology of burial ritual — got at the heart of at least one of
the three main issues in the prolonged debate over the Dakota Access
Pipeline project. Opposition to wealthy oil companies and their
potential profits if and after the pipeline is completed would have been
sufficient to attract the thousands who came to support Sioux
protestors at Standing Rock. Meanwhile, environmentalists, who care and
worry about what such a pipeline under the plains and river might do,
have raised appropriate questions. But “grandmother”—a technical title
among the Sioux for women like Spotted Eagle—really got at the heart of
what animates the protesters and their sympathizers.

Why the comparison to a sacred place like Arlington Cemetery? Or the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or key monuments at Gettysburg? What makes
this Sioux site sacred, inviolable in the eyes of those for whom this
place in North Dakota has drawn so much national attention? The
environmental concerns alone would have been ominous enough to agitate
the Native Americans on the scene. But the Cannonball River, which flows
nearby, and the complex of tributaries connected to the Missouri River,
are not merely sources of water. No, Spotted Eagle has said, water is
“the best medicine,” the sustainer of life from a mother’s womb until
its issue, years later, breathes no longer. Water is necessary for the
sweat lodge, so important in Sioux worship, and it serves as a purifier
and calmer in sacred ceremonies. And much more.

Spotted Eagle spoke to interviewers about women gathered on the
river’s bank to sing stories: “One hundred years from now, somebody’s
going to go down along the Cannonball River and they’re going to hear
those stories.” (See Ravitz under Resources below.) What motivates her
and her fellow worshippers, above all, is concern that the pipeline will
profane the burial sites over and around and through which it will
flow. All of the governmental action is thus, in the eyes of the Native
Americans, a profanation.

Sightings spends so many lines on this one out of many contested
revered sites in the “flyover country” of the Great Plains — my
homeland — in the interest of giving attention to the rites of some of the
peoples who have been plundered, exploited, silenced, and murdered for
more than 500 years by us newcomers, who now make the rules, establish
the rituals, and bring the edicts and the guns to enforce them. Weekly,
if not daily, we hear and read of the ins and outs, the ups and downs,
of this most recent conflict. We observe how readily disdained the
protesters are. But we are moved by the fact that leaders and
sympathizers of many religious bodies, including Jews and Muslims,
Catholics at the highest level, mainline Protestants, and some
Evangelicals, have publicly sided with the Sioux.

Many of them know that there are other sides (and undersides) to
conflicts like this one. They know how complex are the valid economic
issues on the opposing sides of such ventures. Even some
close-to-the-scene Native Americans are concerned about the potential
economic loss, should the Native Americans win. (They won’t.)
Sympathetic religious leaders are urging that the spiritual concerns and
the human rights of the protesters be respected in the face of often
brutal economic and political forces and realities. And the Standing
Rock Sioux, by their witness, are teaching the nation that “the sacred”
takes many forms and deserves to be handled with care, and with awe,
even in our profane days and ways.

Resources

– Brekke, Gregg. “PC(USA) offers support for Standing Rock Sioux protest in North Dakota.”
Presbyterian Mission Agency. August 26, 2016.

– “Churches Uniting in Christ support Standing Rock pipeline protests.”
Churches Uniting in Christ. October 21, 2016.

– “ELCA presiding bishop issues statement addressing Dakota Access Pipeline.”
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. September 9, 2016.

– Erasmus. “Standing Rock is a new turn in Christian ties with native Americans.”
The Economist. November 27, 2016.

– Hodges, Sam, and Doreen Gosmire. “Pipeline protest supporters cheer re-rout ruling.”
United Methodist Church. December 5, 2016.

– Macpherson, James, and Blake Nicholson. “Tribe Files Legal Challenge to Stall Dakota Access Pipeline.”
ABC News. February 9, 2017.

– Ravitz, Jessica. “The sacred land at the center of the Dakota pipeline dispute.”
CNN. November 1, 2016.

– Schuck, Michael J. “Catholic tradition meets Native American spirituality at Dakota Pipeline protest.”
—— America: The Jesuit Review. December 8, 2016.

– White, Jon. “Episcopal Church formally asserts its support of pipeline protestors.”
 Episcopal Café. October 24, 2016.

– Winsor, Morgan, and James Hill.
“Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Files 1st Legal Challenge Over Dakota Access Pipeline Easement.”
ABC News. February 9, 2017.

Author, Martin E. Marty, is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished
Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the
University of Chicago Divinity School. His biography, publications, and
contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

Sightings is a publication of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Subscribe to receive Sightings in your inbox twice a week. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sightings
is edited by Brett Colasacco, a PhD candidate in Religion, Literature,
and Visual Culture at the University of Chicago Divinity School.