Standing Rock - standing up for water rights

My family is from North Dakota. It was a peaceful rather windy place living there as a child. The land there was taken from the indigenous forcefully, sold and farmed. My grandfather was one of those farming immigrants, my grandmother a native women. Threats of violence and abuse and some sort of impending hell threat kept the indigenous, including my grandmother, silent and under control. SHE and all her family feared the boarding schools and it's toxic ways, and kept silent about our own family heritage to protect us from the church and the government who had created those prison schools. This system of control was used them to destroy an entire culture of people. Yet, a few of those natives tried to maintain some of what they had in the past against all odds although quietly. It was an uphill battle all the way. Despair became the order of the day. Fear sucks the life out of people. Loss is the result, a loss of hope being the worst. How do you sell something you don't own? They had always lived without property deeds. They were taught the land, the water and the air were a stewardship project, just as the children were. A right of earth life lived in balance and harmony. Sharing the joy and loss of each day of our freewill. Not easy, but a grand adventure in the past. Then everything started to run out, run dry, run low. The little water left was about to be poisoned. So they woke up from that sad place of loss and started singing again!! Prayers, dancing, and community began to build. Families once torn apart by addiction and abuse came together. They told their stories. They began to reconcile the losses. Sexual, emotional, religious, and physical abuse, even torture and death, were in the church, at school and even in their own homes. Children were traded for liquor and drugs and the death of an entire way of life was pending. This is a last stand. A stand for the right to life here. Water, food, land to nurture and live on, and love are what we were told was ours before we were born. Now in the claiming of this promise, Standing Rock is standing strong. Please be a part of saving our world, our water, our rights, not theirs only but all of ours! AND yes, ultimately, OUR CHILDREN, for they are the ones we are protecting the future for.