The Never-Ending Indian Wars

A version of this article appeared in Yes! magazine in February 2017. T he world has been shocked by North Dakota’s violent, militarized reaction to the oil pipeline resistance at Standing Rock. For the better part of a year, people watched via social media, then increasingly with conventional media, as heavily armed law enforcement officers and private security agents used dogs, rubber bullets, mace, tear gas, batons, and water cannons deployed in sub-freezing temperatures to attack unarmed civilians. A volunteer medical team of doctors, nurses, EMTs, homeopathic physicians, herbalists and others cared f or the many hundreds of injured. More than 100 were hospitalized, and more than 7 00 were arrested as they protested the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Standing Rock may have revealed this violence to a new generation of observers, but for Native people, the brutality is nothing new, says Wendsler Nosie Sr., San Carlos Apache leader of Apach