Campaign Action
Turnaround Arts, a program under the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, is sponsoring a free concert at Prairie Knights Casino and Resort at Fort Yates, North Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation tonight, October 11. Dave Matthews will headline and feature performances by Mic Jordan, Ledisi, DJ IZ. Alfre Woodard will MC along with Chase Iron Eyes who is is the Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative, ND At-large District and also a member of the Standing Rock Tribe.
Celebrity support has been critical in bringing national and international attention to the Water Protectors in North Dakota who continue to maintain a presence along the pipeline route. They are calling for support to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from continuing to lay down an infrastructure to enable more dirty oil extraction and in particular endangering precious water sources along the way. More background on #noDAPL here.
Just a few of the names I’ve noticed are Leonardo DiCaprio who tweeted out a call for more support, Susan Sarandon and others protested in D.C. on behalf of #noDAPL. Rosario Dawson and Riley Keough have visited the site along with many more and too many to detail. Feel free to mention other names in the comments. Neil Young wrote a song for Standing Rock. Our American Indian stars have visited also, such as Buffy Sainte-Marie and Wes Studi.
Monday, October 10, actor Shailene Woodley, star of The Fault In Our Stars and the Divergent series, was arrested along with 26 other people at the pipeline construction site in North Dakota. Woodley livestreamed her own arrest and it has been viewed over 2 million times.
Our most prolific ally and supporter, Lawrence O’Donnell featured Woodley in his commentary last night on the irony of American Indians being arrested for trespassing on their ancestral lands which were stolen from them. And arrested on Indigenous Peoples Day.
Full transcript below the video.
O’Donnell: Today's a holiday for the federal government and something of a day of mourning for native American tribes from coast-to-coast. The tribes have renamed Columbus day Indigenous Peoples Day. They don't believe Columbus discovered them. They believe they discovered Columbus trespassing. 28 people were arrested for trespassing today in North Dakota where the largest uprising by tribes in history has taken place this year in protest of the construction of an oil pipeline across sacred tribal sites.
Actress Shailene Woodley, who’s been active in that movement for months now brought extra attention to the protests today because she was one of the 28 arrested. Her arrest was captured on her Facebook live.
[Woodley’s video] Woodley: All right, so everybody knows, we are going to our vehicle, which they had all surrounded and waiting for me, with giant guns and a giant truck behind them, just so they could arrest me. I hope you're watching, mainstream media. I hope you're watching.
Woodley’s mother: May I ask where she's be being taken?
Woodley: That's my mother.
O’Donnell: Shailene Woodley is admired by many for her commitment displayed today and she’ll be dismissed by some as just another liberal Hollywood actor dabbling in her latest cause. I’ve never met Shailene Woodley but I’m confident that like everyone else I met when I reported from the protest site in North Dakota, she doesn't care what you think of her. She cares what you think of the members of tribes who have been arrested on that land, arrested for trespassing. Tribes who were on that land thousands of years before we knew it existed. And so once again, Native Americans were arrested for trespassing on land that was stolen from them through genocide and broken treaties. And today those arrests occurred on the day that the United States of America officially celebrates the greatest trespasser in human history.
We are all stewards of the earth
