Picture security clearing a path for a Trump entourage, security bristling with the in-your-face firepower befitting a newly inaugurated president used to nonchalantly informing the superfluous lackey just how fired he is.
People assume that this is the man who will occupy the White House, the arrogant, scheming, shameless self-promotor; he of the alleged toilet seat made of gold.
Now place that president on the windswept prairie of North Dakota, having just driven east along Highway 1806, a dark, head-of-state motorcade, official flags flapping in the wind, surreal against a backdrop of burnt yellow buffalo grass and barbwire fence lines. Behind him, construction crews and security forces representing the bad guy, the corporate bully calling itself Energy Transfer Partners, calling its project, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).
Before him, the good guy, aboriginal “Water Protectors” clad in multi-colored apparel expressing the storied tribal traditions that bind them to this land, willing to stand weaponless before the greatest military power in human history to protect what they hold sacred, to protect what they fear is in imminent danger of being destroyed.
These protestors had their chance to protest pipeline construction in a series of court hearings, long before construction ever started. They never showed up.
The Standing Rock Tribal Historic Preservation Officer was given dozens of opportunities well in advance of construction to present detailed information of the nature and location of threatened tribal sites. She never bothered to show up, she never responded to outreach.
Given that, one can imagine this no-nonsense, business-oriented president having no patience, no sympathy for the Sacred Stones protest camp, and any of the people who stand behind it.
Wouldn’t he just be there, to put a positive face on everything, for the international media, to give the impression he is willing to negotiate with both factions on the disputed ground, torn by the scuffle and contention? Just before he gives the pipeline the presidential thumbs up? Those of us raised in Lakota country, enrolled in the various bands on all Oceti Sakowin reservations, feel every hurt, every wound, every cry of anguish…when dogs attack, and tear gas explodes, and rubber bullets connect, and blood runs, and water cannons drench protestors in freezing conditions, inviting hypothermia.
When we see the pictures, when we hear the heartfelt testimony of relatives and loved ones, we feel a fury, a rage against the cold-blooded injustice of a hypocritical superpower who doesn’t have any respect for the history, sovereignty and dignity of a proud people, of an ancient nation, the Great Sioux Nation.
Sometimes when a Lakota journalist types such words, eyes tear up, hands shake over the clacking keyboard, it is a combination of sorrow and anger hard to describe. Always, the thinking center of the brain tries to process the conflicting facts and emotions, to arrive at some realistic perception of all the factions and their warring interests, trying to be fact-based and fair-minded.
It isn’t easy.
When you see the bloody, wounded faces of unarmed people — your people — and the militaristic forces aligned against them, willing to kill to protect a pipeline and a construction project, it is hard to give facts the same credence as emotion. You want your people to arrive in overwhelming numbers, by the tens of thousands, to storm the construction site, and do to DAPL security what they are doing to the water protectors, what DAPL is willing to do to the water itself, by running a pipeline under the Missouri River. You want the enemy to be run from the field, bloody and broken, you want everything they left behind to be burned to nothingness.
But that rage passes. You think there must be a national conscience, there must be concern, why don’t people seem to care? Because there is a news blackout. No Anderson Cooper, because he doesn’t give a rip about a pocket people insignificant as Indians, no FOX News, because it conflicts with their in-house narrative, no Rachel Maddow, because MSNBC is a front for faux progressivism, critically corrupted by corporate interest.
These journalists, once idealists at heart, have all sold the vital part of their souls for personal success. What remains is hope, because hope has a place even in the depths of the most vile hell, it can survive, and prevail under any conditions, however horrific.
That we are not yet extinct as a species, despite our infinite capacity for inhumanity to man, is hard evidence of that, and that is why my hope cannot be snuffed out, even by dead Syrian babies washed up on a beach, a sight we rationalized away as a nation, even that inexcusable callousness for the plight of dying people, cannot extinguish my sense of hope.
This president will look at DAPL with a fair mind, will feel compassion for the Oceti Sakowin, and admire their courage, their character, their heartfelt earnestness. Because he has to, because this script doesn’t call for a duplicitous, rapacious, cold-blooded man of business with no heart and no sense of justice.
After all, he really never had a toilet seat made of gold.
So, in my hope-empowered imagination, President Donald Trump arrives at the Sacred Stones encampment, and he hugs women and children, and he heartily shakes the hands of all ikce wicasa, and he orders the DAPL pipeline construction to cease forever.
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ABOUT THE GUEST AUTHOR: James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He just won best columnist award from the Native American Journalists Association and was selected as best general interest columnist and best sports columnist by the South Dakota Newspaper Association in 2015. He currently writes for Native Sun News, a Lakota owned and operated newspaper from Rapid City, S.D.