Standing Rock and Water

The Rev. Pamela Dolan, a friend to MO IPL, recently posted this to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Please read it as she captures why this is such an important issue. 

The reason water is such a powerful symbol in religious ritual, poetry, art, and even in dreams is because it is so powerful in our real lives. It is the primary component of our bodies. We cannot survive without it; at the same time, we know it can kill us.

It should come as no surprise that the hashtag #waterislife has become one of the rallying cries for those protesting the Dakota Access pipeline that is slated to stretch more than 1,100 miles, including through land considered sacred by the Standing Rock Sioux.

Last Sunday night the demonstrations took a horrific turn. While the reports of militarized police using attack dogs, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and tear gas were brutal enough, there was something almost obscene about the images of water cannons set loose on human beings, nearly drowning them with their torrential force, especially given that the air temperature was in the 20s.

Water as a weapon, being used against people protecting water — this is beyond irony and veers into an almost blasphemous kind of cruelty. Feeling my heart heavy with the images I had allowed myself briefly to witness, including clips concerning a young woman who may have to have her arm amputated due to injuries received (allegedly by a concussion grenade thrown by police), I decided to reach out, to find some connection to someone with firsthand experience.

Lauren R. Stanley is a fellow Episcopal priest; I know her only through Facebook, although many of my friends in the St. Louis area know her personally from time spent on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where the the Rev. Stanley is priest-in-charge. Based on her life and ministry among Native people and her multiple visits to Standing Rock, she has much to say about the situation there.

Her first point is that the people demonstrating against the DAPL are not merely protecting their own water and land — they are doing this for the sake of others, as well. As she put it, there are 17 million of us who live downriver from the part of the Missouri that the proposed pipeline would cross — do we all know where our water comes from? Are we sure it wouldn’t be contaminated in the event of a spill? She repeated a familiar but potent refrain: “I can’t drink oil.”

Stanley also spoke of the long history of exploitation of and violence against the original people of this land. She traced it back to the Doctrine of Discovery, as first officially promulgated in a papal bull in 1492 that allowed for the subjugation of any people who were “discovered” in the so-called New World.

This took away their humanity along with their rights to the land on which they had lived for untold generations. This history can only add to the pain caused by the treatment of the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies today. One especially traumatic episode that she recounted was when four tribal leaders were arrested while at prayer; during their detention officials put them in dog kennels. “Enough is enough,” Stanley said. “This is about dignity and respect.” When asked what she wanted people to do about the situation, Stanley asked for everyone concerned to look at the tactics being used and say, “This is not who we are.” She urged everyone to contact state and federal officials to demand that the militarized response end. She continued, “Let’s stand up for the people without whom we would not have survived on this continent, and from whom we took and took.

This Thanksgiving, can we at least show respect?” Thanksgiving and the winter holidays that follow are times for family reunions and for expressing gratitude for the gifts in our life. I consider it a tremendous gift to be a priest, but a gift that comes with responsibilities. The first time I baptized a baby, I cried. The power of the sacrament hit me with such force that I could hardly get the words out. Before the actual baptism, the part where the water makes contact with the body, the priest says a Thanksgiving over the Water that begins, “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.” In baptism God does something that is irreversible and therefore eternal, using two primary ingredients to bring forth new life: water and human beings. Water is the outward and visible sign of a powerful inner grace, the transformation that occurs when one is adopted into the household of God and made a member of his eternal priesthood.

​We desperately need transformation in our world today. We cannot let our sacred words and actions become empty rituals because they do not reflect the way we live our lives. Perhaps as we gather with family and friends during this holiday season we could place a pitcher of water on our dining tables, a reminder of the source of all life and a pledge to protect our planet and the most vulnerable among us.

Dolan serves as rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Town and Country. She is a regular Faith Perspectives contributor ​