Documentary Review: “Awake: A Dream From Standing Rock” is a sobering, crucial film

One of the first tan­gi­ble tragedies of the Trump regime was the exec­u­tive order signed just a few days into his term, over­turn­ing a deci­sion by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to halt the Dako­ta Access Pipeline (DAPL) project until a full envi­ron­men­tal impact study could be com­plet­ed. Trump’s exec­u­tive order allowed DAPL to move for­ward, along with the pre­vi­ous­ly-stalled Key­stone XL pipeline project.

“Awake: A Dream from Stand­ing Rock” is a doc­u­men­tary in three parts about the DAPL protests at the Stand­ing Rock Sioux Reser­va­tion in North Dakota.

Part I, direct­ed by Josh Fox, is writ­ten and nar­rat­ed by Floris White­bull. Accom­pa­ny­ing video and images from Stand­ing Rock, DAPL con­struc­tion, White­bull and her chil­dren, and the protests, White­bull talks about a dream she had.

“The bat­tle for the future is laid out clear­ly before me. On one side, greed, fear, mon­ey, vio­lence, hate, and oil. On the oth­er, gen­eros­i­ty, faith, free­dom, peace, and water.”

She notes DAPL has to run under the Mis­souri Riv­er, a water source for over 17 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, and the only source of water for Stand­ing Rock Nation. Burst pipelines in oth­er parts of the coun­try have per­ma­nent­ly destroyed mul­ti­ple water­sheds, like the Kala­ma­zoo River.

Part II of the doc­u­men­tary is direct­ed by James Spi­one and is made up of footage, with­out com­men­tary, from Stand­ing Rock, includ­ing mul­ti­ple inci­dents of law enforce­ment assault­ing pro­tes­tors with pep­per spray, rub­ber bul­lets, and by spray­ing water.

Tur­tle Island is a bur­ial ground at Stand­ing Rock and as such is a spe­cial, sacred place for mem­bers of the Stand­ing Rock Sioux tribe. Yet law enforce­ment occu­pied this land, ignor­ing pleas from trib­al mem­bers to leave it.

On Thanks­giv­ing Day, which some Native Amer­i­cans refer to as Survivor’s Day due to the trag­ic con­se­quences for Native Amer­i­cans of the first Thanks­giv­ing and the Euro­pean col­o­niza­tion of Amer­i­ca, pro­tes­tors decid­ed to make a bridge to be able to set foot on Tur­tle Island and hon­or their elders who had passed away.

Police on mega­phones at the top of the hill on Tur­tle Island said that they had no choice but to treat peo­ple com­ing on to Tur­tle Island as an act of aggres­sion and warned that they would have to defend them­selves, even though no one was attempt­ing to go up the hill and con­front police.

Overnight, police put up razor wire around the island, pre­vent­ing pro­tes­tors or trib­al mem­bers to get on the island again.

Part III of “Awake” is direct­ed by Myron Dewey, a Native Amer­i­can film­mak­er and activist. He came to Stand­ing Rock in order to see for him­self what was hap­pen­ing and to fill a gap that he per­ceived in media cov­er­age of the protests: that none of the cov­er­age was pro­duced by Native Amer­i­cans or from a Native perspective.

His footage shows many of his inter­ac­tions with law enforce­ment in and around Stand­ing Rock. He notes that Mor­ton Coun­ty didn’t charge pri­vate DAPL police for pep­per-spray­ing and set­ting dogs on peo­ple, but did harangue non-vio­lent pro­tes­tors with felony charges for trespassing.

He also has a con­ver­sa­tion with black author, intel­lec­tu­al, and activist Cor­nell West, who came out to Stand­ing Rock to show his sol­i­dar­i­ty with the water protectors.

“Human rights have already been vio­lat­ed on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent lev­els. They’re using domes­tic resources on behalf of an inter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate enti­ty to con­tain and repress sov­er­eign nations as well as cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States who are in sol­i­dar­i­ty with sov­er­eign nations,” West said.

In the con­clu­sion of the film (directed/written by Fox and White­bull, who cre­at­ed Part I), the sad events cre­at­ed by Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order are recount­ed, includ­ing the deploy­ment of fed­er­al and state troops onto trib­al land in late Feb­ru­ary to force­ful­ly remove what remained of the peo­ple and protest camp. Tepees were slashed with knives, and peo­ple were tack­led and arrested.

Water pro­tec­tors remain proud of the move­ment they start­ed, which has spread across the globe as peo­ple protest oth­er pipelines and push for divest­ment from banks that fund DAPL and oth­er pipeline projects.

As Mor­ton says in the film, cli­mate change is not just about the Earth, but about our rela­tion­ships to each oth­er, how we treat each oth­er, and about justice.

Watch “Awake” and be inspired to treat the plan­et and each oth­er bet­ter, and to con­tin­ue fight­ing for social and envi­ron­men­tal justice.

“Awake” is cur­rent­ly steam­ing on Netflix.