The Young Lions Of Standing Rock

Thinking of an opening line for this post, I walked to the sink to fill up my canteen. I don’t have any direct connections to the Standing Rock Sioux, but want to express my support. As the water resonates inside my stainless steel canteen, I mutter a short prayer of gratitude for clean water. The obvious occurs to me. My connection to Standing Rock is all of our connection to Standing Rock: a right to clean water. A right to say enough.

Like most people watching the distressing militarized response to the peaceful ‘Water Protectors’ at Standing Rock unfold, I was struck by the bitter irony of the Mahler Wildlife Refuge occupiers being acquitted of all charges in the midst of such a violent response that included police and national guard from several states. A friend of mine claims that the cases are not comparable because of the vested economic interests behind Standing Rock. But to me it smacks of a cultural double standard that has been at the heart of American treatment of Native peoples since our destitute and pilgrim ancestors arrived as immigrants on their continent.

I was particularly struck by the appeals of the Occupiers Mormonism, which reminded me of an obscure prophesy contained in the Book of Mormon.

The Mahler Wildlife Refuge Occupation

The occupation began on January 2, 2016 when Ammon Bundy and several accomplices left a peaceful protest in Burn, Oregon for the offices of the Mahler Wildlife Refuge. They broke into the closed facility and declared their intention to stay, until the federal government handed public lands back to ‘the people.’

Ammon Bundy had been in trouble with the feds before during a 2014 standoff near his father, Cliven Bundy’s Nevada Ranch. Cliven and son, are both Mormons, who believe that they are acting under the guidance of Divine inspiration, to fight for freedom and against tyranny.

On February 11, 2016, the occupiers were arrested, and federal prosecutors saw this as a slam dunk conviction. The most significant charge was conspiracy to intimidate federal employees. However, on October 27, a jury acquitted the seven defendants of all federal charges. The defendants claimed that they were not intimidating anyone, and sought to usurp ownership of the land through “adverse possession” or occupation.

The legal community has expressed shock at the verdict and is citing the conviction as a case of “jury nullification,” which “occurs when a jury returns a verdict of Not Guilty despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation charged. The jury in effect nullifies a law that it believes is either immoral or wrongly applied to the defendant whose fate they are charged with deciding.”

Standing Rock

The Standing Rock Sioux’s primary source of drinking water comes from a reservoir made on the Missouri River. In the 1950s, hundreds of Sioux families were forcibly resettled to make room for the Oahe Dam one of the larger dams on the Missouri River which now provides electricity and irrigation water to nearby towns. Oahe Lake is the fourth largest reservoir in the US, and is ironically named after the Mission established there in 1874. The dam ate 150,000 acres of the Cheyanne reservation to eminent domain and 55,900 acres of the Standing Rock Sioux; most of it prime medicine harvesting, agricultural, timber and hunting lands along the Missouri river.

Now, the Texas-based company Dakota Access and Energy Transfer Partners wants to put a 1,200 mile oil pipeline that will run from the Bakken oil fields to Illinois, through traditional Sioux territory. At a cost of nearly $4 billion, the pipe would transport over 570,000 gallons of crude oil a day. The Company insists that they are taking every precaution, but according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) there have been 3,300 incidents of leaks and spills from oil and gas pipelines since 2010. The question is not if, but when the pipeline will leak.

The route, which recently bulldozed a traditional Sioux burial ground, is technically on private land owned by the Company, however, the Sioux claim that the land is guaranteed to them by the Fort Laramie Treaty 1851. Thousands of “Water Protectors” have mobilized from the Sioux and other tribes across the globe to stop the construction of the pipeline armed with their bodies, their prayer, eagle feathers, sweat lodges and ceremony. The response? Battle-clad, riot-geared National Guardsmen with concussion cannons, rubber bullets, bean bags, water cannons, attack dogs and large tank-like vehicles.

Not all of the Stand Rock Sioux are protesting, some are even for the pipeline which would bring money into the Reserve, most however oppose it. To stop the pipeline, the tribe first attempted to sue the permitting agency, the Army Corps of Engineers for clearly violating the National Historic Preservation Act and National Environmental Protection Act. The Obama administration halted the project in early 2016, but a federal court overturned the ruling allowing the project to go ahead. The project blatantly privileges private economic interests before public health, indigenous legal treaty rights, and the sacred traditional landscape of the Standing Rock Sioux.

I will let more talented writers, and more involved writers analyze the political and cultural dimensions of this blatant double standard, but I wanted to point out an interesting irony exposed at the heart of the Mahler occupation. While Ammon Bundy and his father claim to be inspired by God to protect freedom and the US Constitution, they have neglected a lesser known prophecy contained in the Book of Mormon, their sacred text.

Mormon Prophecy

In 1831, Joseph Smith dictated a Revelation to his scribe addressed to Leman Copley, who was at that time a new Mormon convert, who still had sympathies with the Shakers. The Shakers were a semi-monastic branch of the Quakers who arrived in the US in the late 1700s with their teacher Ann Lee, who claimed to be the Second Coming of Jesus. Shakers were celibate, pacifist, vegetarians who valued quality craftsmanship and built dozens of utopian villages throughout the Eastern US.

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 49, Smith presents a response to the Shakers, denying their doctrines as of God, and affirming Smith’s own authority as the true Prophet. At the end of the Section, Smith changes course, and states:

“But before the great day of the Lord shall come, Jacob shall flourish in the wilderness, and the Lamanites shall blossom as the rose.”

Here, Lamanites, and Jacob both refer generally to Native Americans. This is because the Book of Mormon, which Joseph Smith brought to light, claims to be a record of the ancestors of Native American peoples, who as the story goes, begin as Jews from 6^th century Palestine. Laman was the unrighteous brother of Nephi, the sons of Lehi. The arc of the Book of Mormon narrative is a seesaw between righteous and unrighteous “Nephite” and “Lamanite” civilizations. At the end of the sprawling epic, there are only a few righteous people left, who commit the entire story to golden plates, so that their descendants, the Native Americans, can rediscover the truth through the “Gentiles”, i.e. Joseph Smith.

The important point is that Smith’s comments refer to a Book of Mormon prophesy that predicts a curious fate for Native people, who in Smith’s day were universally looked upon as inferior, Godless, savages who if they could not assimilate might as well be exterminated. The Third Book of Nephi chapter 21:12 in the Book of Mormon has strong words for the unrighteous Gentiles (Euro-Americans) of Smith’s time:

“And my people [Native Americans] who are a remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, yea, in the midst of them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver…”

This passage, a quote from the OT prophet Micah, refers to Native people as the true descendants of God’s chosen people, who shall be like young lions among the Gentiles. In other words, a fierce and dangerous force to be reckoned with. In Smith’s time, as the Indian wars were coming a close, it must have been hard to imagine a resurgence of Native peoples. However, the chapter continues:

“…But if they [Euro-Americans] will repent and hearken unto my words, and harden not their hearts, I will establish my church among them, and they shall come in unto the covenant and be numbered among this the remnant of Jacob [Native peoples], unto whom I have given this land for their inheritance”

If Euro-Americans will accept the Gospel, they too can be grafted onto the tree of God’s chosen people, and be co-inheritors of the American continent with Native peoples.

Suffice it to say, Euro-Americans simply took what they wanted from Native people, dividing them against themselves, forcing them to sign treaties that were immediately broken, slaughtering them by the thousands, sometimes for no reason, or for simply trying to feed themselves. It is clear that we have a lot to repent of, and a lot of reconciliation to do. What Bundy didn’t realize, is that the land he thought he was reclaiming, does not belong to the Federal government or him. It belongs to the Paiutes, who have lived in the area seasonally for at least 15,000 years. As the story has been in so many other places, the Piute in the area were restricted to a small reserve that continued to shrink. They were also denied hunting and fishing rights that were promised to them. After much hardship, exile and death, the Piute only recently recovered some 700 acres of their traditional territory, by forming the Burns Paiute Indian Band.

However according to the Book of Mormon, it is Native People who will be charged with rebuilding society, and ushering in the “New Jerusalem.”

“…And they [Euro-Americans] shall assist my people [Native Americans], the remnant of Jacob [Native Americans], and also as many of the house of Israel as shall come, that they may build a city, which shall be called the New Jerusalem.”

The protests at Standing Rock, and the increasing indigenous resurgence that is happening all over the globe, should remind apocalyptic Mormons that it is not them who are promised to inherit the land, it is the so-called ‘Remnant of Jacob.’ Like the young lion among us, Native peoples are beginning to wake up to their own power, and they are proposing a very different direction to business as usual oil and gas development, or States Rights devolution.

It is my prayer that we can get behind the young lions of Native American youth who are leading the way against climate change, ecosystem health, clean water, and a livable future for planet earth.

Resources Used

The Young Lions of Standing Rock