There is a concept among indigenous peoples: the idea of the seventh generation. Indigenous people conduct themselves with higher purpose, with the mindset that they are not here on this earth for themselves. They are not here for their children, or their grandchildren, or even their great-grandchildren.

They are here for the next seven generations of their people.

This idea carries over to the way they make decisions and the way they interact with the environment. It’s part of the reason why tribes across the United States have made their way to Cannon Ball, North Dakota, to support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and protest the creation of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The tribe and its supporters say the pipeline would destroy their land and has the potential to leak into the Missouri River, their primary source of water.

Among the people traveling across the country to support the Sioux Tribe is Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, a Syracuse University graduate student majoring in magazine, newspaper and online journalism. She left Syracuse on Friday and made the long drive to North Dakota this weekend to be at the protest campsite for a week and a half.

“I felt this intangible pull,” she said. “As an indigenous person, I felt like I needed to go there.”

This is Bennett-Begaye’s second time traveling to North Dakota for the pipeline protests — the first was during Labor Day weekend in September.

Bennett-Begaye’s sister asked if she wanted to join her in North Dakota and she quickly agreed. She was met with people questioning her choice to make the more than 1,500-mile journey on her own. She started to doubt herself.

Can I do this? 

Am I able to do this? 

Am I crazy?

The night before she left — mere hours before she hit the road — Bennett-Begaye received a message on Facebook from a fellow student wishing to join her on the trip. A couple hours later, someone else had signed on.

Armed with a tent, bottled water, food supplies and a small gas cooker, the trio set off.

After dropping their food contributions off at the communal dining centers, the new visitors began to explore. The camp was full of tents, teepees and people cheering and blowing horns. They had to rely on crackers and cookies for between-meal snacks, and used baby wipes and jugs of water instead of a shower.

Night fell and Bennett-Begaye fell asleep to the sound of drumming and crackling camp-fires. She said the camp felt safe and peaceful.

“It was an unfamiliar situation but I felt familiar with it because I was just like, ‘I feel like I’m at home,’” Bennett-Begaye said. “I felt very comfortable, it was definitely more love and support there, and I felt like I needed to be there.”

A few days later, the laid-back vibe of the camp had vanished.

Bennett-Begaye was racing down the road, clutching her iPad, trying to record the destruction taking place. What began as a water march near the barricade ended with a standoff between protestors and bulldozers.

You have no right to do that.

You’re raping Mother Earth.

Why are you doing this?

Protesters hurled questions and accusations at the machines threatening their way of life.

Bennett-Begaye described the heartbreaking scene of a mother and her young son standing by the barricades.

“She was ready to go under the fence and people beside her were pulling it up and she was going to go and he grabbed her … she grabbed his hand and he grabbed his drum and they both went under the fence.”

Shortly after the woman and her child crossed the fence line, others joined them. The fence fell and Bennett-Begaye was faced with a decision: to follow the crowd flooding onto the private land or to stay on the safer side of the fence.

The protesters were met with dogs, trucks and landowners. But they kept pushing, running for more than a mile. Bennett-Begaye saw people nursing dog bites and other injuries.

As a journalist, Bennett-Begaye said she traveled to North Dakota both to report on it and to take part in the activism. Formerly working toward a career in sports medicine, she now hopes to someday start a magazine that focuses on issues regarding native peoples.

“It’s complicated, I think, as a native journalist,” Bennett-Begaye said. “Journalists are taught to be objective, but that’s not who I am. That’s not why I’m doing this.”

Hugh Burnam, a Ph.D. student in the School of Education and a friend of Bennett-Begaye through the Native Student Program, said while Bennett-Begaye is heading to the protest to report on it, that’s not the only way it should be viewed.

It should be seen, he added, as putting time aside for indigenous people and their communities.

“The people in North Dakota, they reached out and they said, ‘We need your help.’ They reached out to a lot of people, to all native people, everywhere,” Burnam said. “To native people, all the tribes that showed up there, Jourdan is just an individual. But she works hard for the communities and for the people, and for the betterment of the whole.”

This is a common ideology among indigenous people. When someone comes asking for help, you never say no unless you physically can’t, said Regina Jones, an assistant director within the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the director of the Native Student Program.

Jones added that what Bennett-Begaye represents is SU’s commitment to native issues and its ongoing support for the indigenous student community.

Burnam echoed the sentiment, saying that SU has come a long way, and that if Bennett-Begaye had asked to go to the protests 10 years ago, she would not have the support she has today from her professors and those in the Native Student Program.

“It’s telling to me because I think we’ve come a long way as far as supporting people like her at an institutional level and from an employer level, but I think we have a longer ways to go,” Burnam said. “These are things that I don’t think we should have to ask permission for.”

Bennett-Begaye said as a people, the indigenous community has been trying to survive for more than 500 years, and it is a miracle that they still exist. She said to achieve this, the indigenous community has to be resilient and strong — especially when attending protests like the one in North Dakota.

“Each generation is going to be stronger than the one before,” Bennet-Begaye said. “We are going to be stronger and more tactful and more strategic in the way we help society, and also approach the issues that are not only in the system but also in our communities.”

Published on October 10, 2016 at 9:46 pm

Contact Rachel: rcgilber@syr.edu