Day 1 at Standing Rock: Dark Love
/About the Music: “Dark Love”
From the musician, Cee Goods:
I wanted to find a powerful yet peaceful instrumental which sheds positive energy, but still is strong and forceful.
The photo in the video above is me at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in my home state of North Dakota.
I just drove out here from my adopted home of Seattle, because nothing is more important right now than what’s happening here.
The prayer camps springing up organically at Standing Rock are an example of fully communal, off-the-grid, back-to-the-land living, and the spiritual power here is overflowing. I am overcome and moved to tears multiple times a day, every day. I’m kind of a softy in general, but this is something else.
I know this blog is usually hyper-focused on schools and education, usually back in Washington State. But everything that is happening here at Standing Rock is happening for a cause. For every cause. This is about racial justice, social justice, environmental justice, economic justice, political justice, and about truly getting back in touch with the land, with our Mother Earth.
Standing Rock has been the front line of these battles for the better part of a year now. Trump’s election has intensified that reality nationwide (though I have been told that whichever candidate won, most expected the struggle to continue. As one Lakota man said to me, “We have never had an ally in that office.”), and the camp has grown noticeably since the election.
This place, what’s happening here, the community that’s steadily building…it is unlike anything that any of us, I promise you, have ever experienced. People are being drawn to this sacred land on the prairie for reasons they can’t fully explain, myself included.
Everyone is accepted and appreciated here. People who have been oppressed or unseen for generations are lifted up, and the privileged among us are expected to both leave our privilege at the door and to exercise it when it can benefit the community.
We are acting out the love and community and respect for the Earth that will save our country and our planet, if it is to be saved. Whatever your cause, it is calling to you now.
Please join us.
Here’s where to start:
Look over the Standing Rock Syllabus, an academic-style explanation of settler colonialism and the treaties and history specific to this region.
Take action through nodaplsolidarity.org.
