Description
Standing Rock, in North Dakota (U.S.A.), has been the site of contested territory and colliding imaginaries as indigenous groups and their allies have come up against the police, the interests of capital and the state – putting their bodies on the line to block the construction of the Dakota Access (Oil) Pipeline across unceded indigenous territory and under the Missouri River, threatening the health of the river and water supply. Struggles involving rights to land, rights of land (and of rivers and their caretakers), and rights to futures (what futures and whose) all came to the fore in this dispute. Of particular interest in this paper is the role that military veterans came to play, placing their bodies between the police and the “water protectors” - as protectors of the protectors. This paper will explore the production of subjectivities and possibilities of belonging and desire that were forged at the intersections of the cross-cutting gendered, racialised and cultural imaginaries at Standing Rock. It will argue that the events at Standing Rock need to be understood as part of a contemporary politics of becoming such that while the battle may have been lost, the seeds of possible futures remain.
