There’s no other word for it. That’s precisely the word that deserves to be used for what Dakota Access has done.
It is bad enough indeed that the living Indian-rights protesters of Dakota Access have been attacked with dogs (a treatment which apparently hasn’t gone out of fashion since the 1960’s). But the deliberate bulldozing of an area where the dead of the Sioux nation are buried is a direct outrage against tradition, a mortal insult to the memories of the dead, and, from a personalist point of view, an assault on human dignity itself. For we Orthodox Christians and Latin Christians especially, who treat the bodies of the dead with utmost respect and who recognise only the commitment of the dead to the earth as befitting the image of God in which people were fashioned, this act of disturbing earth which has been hallowed by the presence of the buried Sioux ought to be considered all the more dire. In addition, the fact that Dakota Access conscripted its bulldozer operators to commit this ghoulish act of desecration on Labour Day weekend is a gross and deliberate affront to the dignity and the consciences of working men and women. This is not a radical-left concern only; this is a traditionalist concern, as the slogan ‘defend the sacred’ bears witness. When the graves of the dead cannot be held as sacred and worthy of our respect and honour, then nothing can be.
That Dakota Access would do this out of ordinary, simple greed and out of utilitarian concerns is bad enough. But the fact that the company went out of its way, on a nationally-honoured day of rest, to destroy sites sacred to the Sioux who are protesting against them, speaks to a far more demonic influence behind these events – the same manner of demonic influence which has led Daesh to destroy Christian communities and sites sacred to the Christians of the Holy Land. And it is happening now. In the next state over.
Pray for the Standing Rock Sioux. Stand with the Standing Rock Sioux. Dakota Access’s barbarities will not go unmarked in the hereafter, and they should not go unmarked now.
Not only does this occur in the USA. Foreign corporations, supported by corrupt government and military, are doing the same to the indigenous in Guatemala and Honduras. Greed commits atrocities but for the sake of minerals and for mega plantations of tropical fruits to export, more cause of emigration. Native peoples are massacred and the survivors have no land and no livelihood to support their families and must leave.
ReplyDeleteHello, Carrie! Welcome to the blog, and thank you for the comment!
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right, of course. This sort of thing sadly does happen throughout the Americas too frequently.