Friends from around the country traveled to Standing Rock to support water protectors’ efforts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline.
In Mark, Chapter 4, Jesus and the disciples cross the sea of Galilee in the midst of a killer storm. While the disciples panic, Jesus lies asleep in the back of the boat. But it’s not the storm they’re afraid of. It’s the fact that they believe they are dying and Jesus, the one with the power to save them, doesn’t seem to notice.
FCNL’s Amelia Kegan recounted the story at Annual Meeting, days after the election. And according to Jasmine Krotkov, FCNL General Committee and Advocacy Team member, the story of the disciples in the boat is an apt description of the situation at the Oceti Sakowin Prayer Camps.
People are facing an existential threat to their lives and their lands and their ways, and it doesn’t matter what they do, they are called aggressors, and face violent unprovoked attacks with dogs and chemical weapons and water canons and nobody cares. DAPL keeps drilling despite the order to stop, and nobody cares. They are crying out “Is my life not valuable to you?”
Jasmine continued:
When you’re standing in a giant circle, holding hands, praying and speaking collectively up to the armored representatives of twenty various policing agencies, who are there not to respond to the catastrophe of climate change or the emergency of endangered children, or the crisis of poverty and homelessness in the face of the advancing winter, but to respond to the threat to corporate profits, when you’re standing here, the power of love and spirit-led action is reverberant. Our human microphone echoed the words of the Elders: “We love you. You are your relatives. Talk to us.”