"These Types of Sites Are Really Hard to Find": Lakota Oral Tradition and Resistance Against the Dakota Access Pipeline

Abstract

The Dakota Access Pipeline resistance movement provides a poignant example of the way in which oral traditions remain authoritative in the religious lives of American Indian peoples. The members of Lakota communities confronted with the restriction of their religious freedoms and access to clean drinking water by DAPL’s construction have faced the consequences brought on in part by scholarly assessment of the veracity and importance of oral traditions. As I demonstrate in this thesis, the exclusion of Native voices from conversations about these traditions, both within and outside academia, has larger impacts than just incomplete understandings. Going forward, those engaged in scholarly discourses must understand that they have greater obligations than merely the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Understanding the wider impact of discussions like those surrounding oral traditions provides a stimulus for reflection and reevaluation of the research being conducted about, for, and with American Indian communities.