Spring Faculty Research Showcase
Stewardship and Belonging: Restoring Right Relations
The Indigenous led stand at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL) was both a political and religious movement. Thousands of Native and non-Native peoples gathered at Standing Rock in 2016-17, in response to public appeals to help protect local waterways by Standing Rock resident LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and others. I draw on this political moment to discuss how environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and religious studies converge through the ethics of stewardship. In this talk, I explore how urban Native and Chicano-Indigenous activists and cultural workers were inspired to join the #NoDAPL movement to reinforce Indigenous sovereignty, which is theorized as collective and relational, and in this case waged on behalf of the waters (Holm, Pearson, Chavis 2003; Estes 2019). I argue that urban Native and Chicano-IndigenousÌýparticipation in these stewardship movements was not only an act of solidarity but also an opportunity to heal historical trauma through the restoration of self/community relations.Ìý