Mindful Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Earth Protectors
The Standing Rock Sioux earth protectors are fighting earth destruction, environmental degradation, oil profiteering, and corporate greed. Yes, I suppose finding huge reserves of crude helps many people become employed in the Dakotas. This is important. But other earth-wise activity (more solar for example) would be far more productive. As the First Nations People stand up for their water and spiritual rights, the powers of the state are encroaching on them with more and more force. Reportedly, military equipment, riot police, and attack dogs are being used against mainly unarmed indigenous people praying and demonstrating to protect their rights to clean water and the spiritual sacredness of area burial grounds. Just like much earlier in our glorious history, Americans profiteers (with their official police and sometimes the army) may end up killing American Indians over land and 
its underground riches. Nothing new here! It is only a matter of time before shots are fired and people die! Some say that the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline may have already violated earlier treaty obligations with The Sioux. That has NEVER prevented the dominant white culture from acting for its own financial interests in the past – nothing new here. It may be environmental racism that The Army Corp of Engineers moved the pipeline route away from Bismarck (fear of possible water contamination for mainly white folks) so it now crosses land and water of First Nations People. The marginalization and disrespect continue. Perhaps this is urban slum politics in the great rural areas of the Dakotas. Such fears regarding Bismarck simply emphasize that the technology being used is NOT completely safe and dependable. This is the FALSE PROMISE OF TECHNOLOGY. Like so many of our technological advances (the internet for example), the primacy of safety and security have been over-shadowed by the desire for free flow of commerce and thus greater 
profits. The core issue is that such oil extraction and use continues to threaten mother earth’s health AND OUR FUTURE AS HUMANS. Oil profiteers, using private and public security forces with armored military vehicles and attach dogs, are determined to force the Sioux off the land – perhaps off their own land. Praise to Amy Goodman for reportedly filming brutal dog attacks and releasing the video into the internet network. It is reported that many national unions (except the national AFL-CIO) have already stated their support for the Standing Rock Sioux in their fight against corporate greed (America’s #1 problem) and cultural repression (also a #1 problem – “black lives matter”). Perhaps we will witness annihilation once again (and again and again). Is this “the great American dream?” No!
If ever there was a time for OUR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT to correct a long-standing 
wrong, this may be that time. President Obama, as the Commander and Chief (notice the word, “chief”), this is a good time to act on the behalf of oppressed people, even if it includes acting against corporate profiteering interests.
CHANGE THE ROUTE OF THE PIPELINE NOW, AND FIND WAYS TO REIMBURSE THE DAPL CORPORATE ENTITIES THAT STAND TO FACE GREAT FINANCIAL LOSSES IF THAT IS DONE. CHANGE THE PIPELINE’S ROUTE BEFORE PEOPLE ARE KILLED – THAT IS KILLED OVER OIL! That sounds familiar.
By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont
Author of Mindful Happiness
New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!
offends, please accept my deeply felt apology.
This last focus includes our mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional experiences of the self. I find it so, so interesting that First Nation peoples – like the Buddhists of 2,500 years ago – developed a “psychology of self” as part of their forward progressions. In Buddhist beliefs there is no concrete, independently arising, enduring SELF. It is real in a sense of mind-time, but subject to impermanence, interdependent arising, and essential emptiness. All part of illusion and delusion as we strive to experience sensory pleasure and avoid pain and suffering. These understanding – both First Nation and Buddhist – are quire complex. Mastery of them may reduce personal suffering and increase personal happiness.