A signpost from the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on display at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC.
Hickory Edwards, a member of the Onondaga Nation who traveled 1,572 miles to stand in solidarity with protestors in the Dakotas’ Standing Rock reservation, donated to the museum a symbolic signpost he had erected at the site. Covered in dozens of handmade pointer arrows bearing the names of participant’s homes and the distances they covered to the protest camps, the signpost illustrates well the breadth of support—both national and international—for the Sioux Indians denied a voice in the planning of the pipeline, which verges close enough to their tribal land to risk contaminating their drinking water and disrupting their way of life. “When some people would come to the camp,” Edwards recalls of the protest days, “they’d look around in awe. Where did all these people come from?” The answer, he says, was simple. “We came from everywhere. All around the world, all four corners of the earth.” Speaking on the humble post he planted in the dirt of Standing Rock, whose myriad of custom signs now perfectly embodies his point, Edwards stresses that the symbol is not his alone to claim. “This belongs to everybody,” he says. “I just gave everybody a vessel to express themselves.”
Size: 3840px × 5760px
Photo credit: © Everyday Artistry Photography / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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