Reading: • Whyte, “The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and US Settler Colonialism”
Comprehension & Reflection: Use these questions to help assess your understanding and appreciation of the texts under discussion. We want to continue linking together what we’ve been reading—trying to see the connections and tensions between some of these approaches.
The story of protests against the DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) is complex and can generate a wide field of issues, idea, concepts, tools, practices, hopes, dreams, frustrations, etc. to discuss. Using Whyte, the Women of Standing Rock, and any one of the documentaries, identify what for you stand out as the main issues, struggles, questions, values (or along any other vector you find interesting) of this struggle.
In particular, consider this in relation to our living—or life practices—and how we “heat our homes” and otherwise “energize” our society.
If we are articulating a concept of land as community—as the seeking for justice within human communities and in our relations to our more-than-human kin—what moral or ethical issues arise based on our reliance on fossil fuels?
Can we both respect our selves, our communities, and relations and responsibilities, and work to extract energy from the land?
