Standing Rock Chairman gifts Greta Thunberg with a Lakota name meaning “woman who came from the heavens”
We stand with you. We appreciate you. We love you as a relative
FORT YATES, N.D. —
Nearly 500 Indigenous students stood in a circle surrounding two 16-year-old
climate activists and their fathers Tuesday morning, Oct. 8, in the Standing
Rock High School gym.
A medicine man blessed
the girls — Tokata Iron Eyes and Greta Thunberg — in what’s known as a smudging
ceremony. Then, a circle of men played the drum as everyone in the gym slowly
turned to face the four sacred directions.
One of the drummers,
Hans Young Bird Bradley, of the Standing Rock Environmental Protection Agency,
said the tribe has “no choice but to support them, hold them up” on their
mission to spread awareness about climate change. “We shouldn’t leave it
on the back of two little girls to do this,” he said. “It’s too much weight to
carry for them. It should be all of us doing our part.”
Thunberg, a Swedish
climate activist who came to fame after traveling to the U.S. on an
emissions-free boat, spoke to world leaders at the United Nations climate
action summit in New York last month and has since traveled North America to
continue talking about climate change. She told the crowd of
Indigenous students she was honored to be speaking at “this symbolic place of
resistance” where just three years earlier thousands of Indigenous and
non-Indigenous people gathered to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Though the line was eventually installed, the tribe has continued to fight it
in court as others from the Standing Rock Sioux Nation have built on momentum
from the protest to create a more sustainable future.
Thunberg met Tokata
Iron Eyes — one of the Standing Rock citizens who helped garner support for the
Dakota Access oil pipeline protests in 2016 through the Rezpect Our Water
campaign — at a September event at George Washington University. The two activists
became friends from there, and Iron Eyes invited Thunberg to her homelands.
First, the two visited the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on Oct. 6,
then protested the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Oct. 7 before heading to
Standing Rock. To see two teenagers
take the stage in the Standing Rock High School gym, “it’s inspirational,” said
13-year-old Chante Baker, who sat in the bleachers with her classmates.
The event is “showing
how our country is relying on the youth,” said 17-year-old Wacantkiya Mani Win
Eagle, who supported the pipeline protests in 2016. “It took two youth to
get us all together,” said Cody Two Bears, the head of nonprofit Indigenized
Energy which opened a solar farm last month near the site of the Dakota Access
Pipeline protests. “It’s a very powerful thing to be part of and witness this today.” In her message to her
peers, Iron Eyes said, “We all need clean water and clean air and a safe place
to call home. As Indigenous people, our culture and way of life is inherently
tied to the environment.”
Tyrel Iron Eyes, a
23-year-old from Standing Rock, said he’s proud of his cousin Tokata, and of
Thunberg for getting people to listen to them. “They inspire,” he
said. “And at the end of the day that’s what we need is people to be inspired
to make changes in their lives.” In her remarks to the
crowd, Thunberg said climate change is “going to affect everyone of us in the
future.” “This is a global
fight; this is not just in my home country in Sweden,” she said. “We need local
solutions to this global problem, and of course global solutions as well.”
Tokata said the world
is “at the edge of a cliff as to how much time we have to save our
communities.” “No 16-year-old should
have to travel the world in the first place sharing a message about having
something as simple as clean water and fresh air to breathe,” she said. Thunberg added: “We as
teenagers shouldn’t be the ones taking responsibility. It should be the ones in
power.”
In a closing ceremony,
former Standing Rock Chairman Jay Taken Alive gifted Thunberg with a Lakota
name: Maphiyata echiyatan hin win, meaning “woman who came from the heavens.”
“Only somebody like
that can wake up the world,” he said. “We stand with you. We appreciate you. We
love you as a relative.”
