THE STANDING ROCK PROTEST: Part 1

The iconic sacred Standing Rock of the Sioux. According to Dakota legend, it is a body of a young Indian woman, with her child on her back, who refused to accompany the tribe as they moved south. When others were sent back to find her, she was found to have turned to stone. The stone overlooks an area that was once the empire of the mighty Sioux Nation. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Author: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1963.

By Anthony J. Marsella

I have two major purposes in writing this commentary:

  1. To call attention to the national media’s intentional lack of coverage to the Standing Rock protests. This lack of coverage is an egregious affront and insult to Native American Indians and their supporters, and also to indigenous peoples everywhere caught in struggles against oppression and exploitation by the national and global political elite and cabal: corporate-governments-military. We are witnessing Genocide, Ecocide, and Nationcide!  And still the silence!

2. To address the tragic state of our nation’s alleged commitments to our sacred documents enshrining human rights, participatory governance, equality, and transparency in decisions and policies.

STANDING ROCK: AN ICONIC EVENT DENIED VISIBILITY

Amid the preoccupation with Donald Trump’s election regrets and elation, and his ascendancy to the power and privilege of the USA presidency, there is a conspicuous absence of attention to the what may be the most critical struggle for human rights and human dignity in the United States since the civil rights protests of African American and Women’s Rights born in the 1950s and continuing today.

Even within the context of the continuing struggles for equality and human rights of our times, the unfolding events at Standing Rock promise to dwarf past struggles in their ultimate consequences for revealing the egregious realities of corporate dominance, federal and state government betrayal, and militaristic control and aggression of USA society today.

Protests at Standing Rock by Native American Indians and supporters of law, justice, and conscience, are conspicuously absent from front-page coverage and editorials, and also from TV news shows. Newspaper headlines and opening news coverage stories should be blaring the events at Standing Rock, the origins, historic course, genocidal process,  promoted and sustained by corporate-government-military cabal complicity in the wanton destruction of the Native American Indian land, traditions, and people. It happened and is happening on your watch!

The media coverage should be relentless, and not be left to independent media sources struggling to survive financially as national media stocks soar! This is a national tragedy, and is far more important to our national identity and survival then the vast majority of topics covered. Shame on you New York Times! Shame on you Washington Post! You reveal your ownership and control!

The national political elite have spoken; once again human life and dignity will be sacrificed on the altar of greed and dominance; once again, the concentration of wealth, power, and position in the hands of a few, rule. Must I list the names of the billionaires, political figures, and military luminaries, we have elevated to positions of respect and admiration? Must I cite the award celebrations attempting to establish “icons” to be followed as admirable examples of the status quo? Must I list the celebrities who prance before the media in expensive couture, baring bodies, guarding conscience, and protecting image?  It happened, and is happening, on your watch.  Native American Indians are dying once again in a struggle for their inalienable rights. Where are you?

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a  member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.