tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/standing-rock-34013/articlesStanding Rock – The Conversation2022-10-13T12:18:31Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1813892022-10-13T12:18:31Z2022-10-13T12:18:31Z‘Animism’ recognizes how animals, places and plants have power over humans – and it’s finding renewed interest around the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489173/original/file-20221011-13-9ius2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C4697%2C2680&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shamans from the organization Tengeri conduct an offering ritual in 2013 to Bukhe Bator, the spirit master of the Selenga River, Republic of Buryatia, Russian Federation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roberto Quijada</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A movement known as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/trees-have-rights-too-robert-macfarlane-on-the-new-laws-of-nature">new animism</a>,” which seeks to secure personhood rights for nonhuman beings through legal means, <a href="https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/">is gaining a following around the globe</a>. </p>
<p>New animist environmental activists are not the only ones using the term. Animism itself has become fashionable. Some <a href="https://omyourenergy.com/articles/what-is-animism/">spirituality bloggers</a> talk about animism as <a href="https://www.awecology.eco/animism/">a way to deepen one’s spiritual relationship to nature</a>. Scholars – from <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1030446324">anthropologists</a> to <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/934194942">philosophers</a> – have taken a renewed interest in the concept.</p>
<p>Most of these people are using animism in a very general, and inaccurate, way, to mean the belief that everything in nature has a soul. The renewed interest in animism stems from the hope that people will behave in more ecologically sustainable ways if they believe that the natural world around them is alive. </p>
<p>However, as an <a href="https://jquijada.faculty.wesleyan.edu/">anthropologist of religion</a> who works with people whose religious practices were traditionally described as animist, I believe the reality is both more interesting and more complicated. Animism is not a religion or even a set of beliefs about nature having a soul. It’s a term used by scholars to classify religious practices through which human beings cultivate relationships with more powerful beings that reside in the world around us.</p>
<h2>A history of the term</h2>
<p>The term animism was coined by an early anthropologist, <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/239623">Edward Burnett Tylor, in 1870</a>. Tylor argued that Darwin’s ideas of evolution could be applied to human societies; he classified religions according to their level of development. </p>
<p>He defined animism as a belief in souls: the existence of human souls after death, but also the belief that entities Western perspectives deemed inanimate, like mountains, rivers and trees, had souls. </p>
<p>Animism was, in Tylor’s view, the first stage in the evolution of religion, which developed from animism to polytheism and then to monotheism, which was the most “civilized” form of religion. From this perspective, animism was the most primitive kind of religion, while European, Protestant Christianity was seen as the most evolved of all religions. </p>
<p>Tylor was not the first to make this argument. Scottish philosopher David Hume, for example, made a very similar argument in the “<a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/2964940">Natural History of Religion,” in 1757</a>. Tylor was, however, the first to use the term animism and the classification scheme as part of what was then the nascent field of anthropology, the scientific study of human society.</p>
<p>Animism is therefore not a religion but a term for classifying a type of religion, one which was, in the 1870s at least, deemed by European and American scholars to be less civilized. The racist conception that some groups of people were less civilized than others was integral to the initial definition.</p>
<p>Around the turn of the 19th century, scholars used Tylor’s term to classify a wide array of rituals. <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1196044364">James Frazer</a> and <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/3448213">Geza Roheim</a>, for example, used animism to argue for similarities among the practices of Indigenous populations, ancient Greeks and European peasants. Animism was used to describe <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/910695719">the psychology of Native Americans</a> and Siberian shamans asking spirit masters to <a href="https://wesleyan.on.worldcat.org/oclc/671863176">offer up game to hunters</a>. By the 1940s, however, the term, and the practice of classifying cultures by their level of development, had fallen out of favor. </p>
<p>Why, then, are environmental activists embracing a term with this complicated history?</p>
<h2>An alternative to ‘dominion’</h2>
<p>In 1967, historian Lynn White Jr., himself a devout Christian, argued that the world’s environmental <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203">problems came from Christian dominion theology</a>. In this reading of the biblical account of Genesis, humans are the only part of creation that is made in the image of God, which is usually interpreted to mean that humans, unlike all else in creation, have souls.</p>
<p>This theology gives humans – through Adam and Eve – dominion over the Earth. White argued that through its creation story, Christianity set up a dichotomy between inanimate matter and animate spirit that lifts humans above creation and turns the rest of the world – from animals and plants to rocks, soil and water – into “resources” to be used. </p>
<p>It is important to note that this is only one of many Christian interpretations of Genesis. On the other hand, White’s argument was that this idea of dominion is what makes environmental exploitation under capitalism possible, and that argument was compelling to many environmentalists, who began to <a href="https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass">develop an interest in Indigenous belief systems</a> as a way to fix environmental problems. </p>
<h2>Relationships of power and obligation</h2>
<p>What is important to understand about animism is that it is not a religion per se, nor is it a matter of merely believing that a mountain or a glacier has a soul. Animism describes practices that establish a relationship between places and people, usually one that recognizes places, animals and plants have power over people.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A tall tree with fabric bands tied around it grows by the edge of a lake." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489174/original/file-20221011-22-kd1mbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fabric offerings tied to this tree mark the location where people can make offerings to a being that resides in the landscape. Olkhon Island, Irkutsk Oblast, Russian Federation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roberto Quijada</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/buddhists-shamans-and-soviets-9780197536421?lang=en&cc=us">I study the way urban Buryats</a>, members of an Indigenous population of Siberia, are reviving pre-Soviet forms of animism and shamanism. Many of their rituals involve asking for blessings and protection from beings such as rivers, lakes and mountains, and from ancestors who are located in the landscape – all practices that create relationships of obligation between people and place. </p>
<p>There is a wide range of practices that contemporary scholars consider to be animist, ranging from <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/do-glaciers-listen">rules about what you can and cannot do</a> near a glacier and <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/emscat.2589">making offerings to the spirit masters of Lake Baikal</a> to representing the <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/earth-beings">will of mountains in political negotiations</a>. </p>
<p>In all these instances, rituals establish relationships of obligation that tie humans to the land, and the land to the humans who live on it. Instead of human dominion over the landscape, in animist cosmologies, humans live under the dominion of the landscape around them. </p>
<h2>No magic bullet</h2>
<p>Animism is not a religion one can convert to but rather a label used for worldviews and practices that acknowledge relationships between nature and the animal world that have power over humans and must be respected. </p>
<p>These practices can be religious rituals, but they can also be forms of environmental care, farming practices or protests, such as those conducted by the water protectors at Standing Rock, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/military-force-criticized-dakota-access-pipeline-protests">known as the No Dakota Access Pipeline, also called by the hashtag #NoDAPL</a>. Protests like the #NoDAPL aren’t what most people are used to thinking of as “religion,” and, as a result, media accounts often miss <a href="https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-30/standing-rock-three-years-and-still-fighting/">the obligations to place and land that motivate protesters</a>.</p>
<p>New Zealand’s 2017 act <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2017/0007/latest/whole.html">recognizing the Whanganui River as a legal person</a>, the culmination of decades of Maori activism, could be described as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/587689/river-me/">animism taking a legal form</a>. Additionally, when Indigenous practices are labeled animist religion, it is easy to overlook the very real biological and ecological scientific knowledge of these communities.</p>
<p>Animist practices are as variable as the peoples and places engaging in such relationships. Indigenous and animist perspectives illustrate that there are many different relationships possible between humans and the world around them, and many environmentalists are finding these alternatives instructive, despite the troubled history of the term.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justine Buck Quijada has received research funding from the University of Chicago, IREX, Fulbright-Hays, The Institute for Citizens and Scholars (previously the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity, NCEEER and Wesleyan University, including Wesleyan University's College of the Environment.</span></em></p>Animism describes religions in which humans are connected to the landscape around them but do not dominate it.Justine Buck Quijada, Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Wesleyan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1043822018-11-14T11:46:09Z2018-11-14T11:46:09ZFrom bicycle to social movements, the changing role of chaplains in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244373/original/file-20181107-74778-c46jbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Protest chaplains' came together to pledge their support to the Occupy Wall Street protests at Judson Memorial Church in New York in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Wall-Street-Protest-Religion/044ec1ede2a841b0b12e3b0e3cb51ba6/1/0">AP Photo/Andrew Burton</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More and more institutions across the United States are hiring chaplains and other spiritual care providers. Some are places that have long employed chaplains, but others may come as a surprise.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.icpc4cops.org/chaplaincy-intro/appointment.html">Various police departments</a> are adding additional chaplains, as are <a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/2018/10/chaplaincy-in-the-heart-of-horse-country">horse racing tracks</a>. At the same time, chaplaincy positions continue to exist in the U.S. House and Senate. </p>
<p>Given the <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/">growing numbers of Americans</a> who describe themselves as atheistic, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” this can appear puzzling. </p>
<p>Why is chaplaincy growing when institutional religious affiliation is on the decline? </p>
<h2>History of chaplaincy</h2>
<p>The presence of chaplains in American institutions goes back to the Revolutionary War, when they served the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972155">American military.</a> Chaplains helped perform many rituals and were present for patriotic ceremonies and events. Military chaplains have long been uniformed, noncombatant, commissioned officers with rank.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A chaplain from Iowa presides over Passover service for Jewish soldiers during World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Italy-WORLD-/dd37372bcfe1da11af9f0014c2589dfb/148/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>Later, prisons and hospitals <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8268248.html">came to employ them</a> to provide spiritual care. In federal prisons, chaplains provide a ministry to prisoners, along with support for behavior modification.</p>
<p>In earlier eras, chaplains, like the American population in general, were overwhelmingly Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. They mostly cared for people from their own faith traditions.</p>
<h2>Changing role</h2>
<p>These traditional roles are changing. In <a href="http://www.wendycadge.com/">our research</a> we have come across some unique examples of organizations and people providing support to individuals and communities in a variety of situations.</p>
<p><a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/projects/allay-care-services">Allay Care Services</a>, a newly launched venture, for example, provides chaplains who, for a fee, help individuals and families clarify their wishes at the end of life and prepare the necessary legal documents. While religious leaders have long worked around these issues, Allay links chaplains to people they do not know. The work takes place by phone. </p>
<p>Chaplains provide care for weary travelers. <a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/projects/donna-mote-atl">Donna Mote</a> at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is just one chaplain among those working in over 170 countries who provide <a href="http://www.wendycadge.com/publications/airport-chapels-and-chaplains/">support to people</a> they see mostly once as they pass through that busy space. At
the New England Seafarers’ Mission in Boston, <a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/seaports">chaplain Steve Cushing</a>, greets the foreign-born staff of container and cruise ships every week. </p>
<p>Chaplains are currently deployed with every <a href="https://www.redcross.org/local/oregon/about-us/news-and-events/news/Meeting-Emotional-and-Spiritual-Needs.html">Red Cross disaster team</a> in the United States and with many fire departments across the country. In these and other examples, they are present with people in crisis and help connect them to other resources. Mote and Cushing, for example, help travelers transfer money to their families, shop for basic necessities or even call home. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A chaplain for disaster and spiritual care with the American Red Cross at a memorial service following Boston Marathon explosions in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Boston-Marathon-Explosions/57517da33a1c405babbdb641b75bc24e/1/0">AP Photo/Boston Globe, Dina Rudick, Pool</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>While some of the people chaplains serve have relationships with local clergy, growing numbers do not. This means that chaplains are, in many cases, the only theologically educated people that these members of the public have a connection with.</p>
<p>Religious studies scholar <a href="http://indiana.edu/%7Erelstud/people/profiles/sullivan_winnifred">Winnifred Sullivan</a> describes chaplains today as <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8268248.html">“secular priests” or “ministers without portfolios.”</a> Their work, increasingly called “spiritual care,” she argues, is understood by many as required by the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First Amendment</a> of the U.S. Constitution. </p>
<h2>Chaplaincy without religion?</h2>
<p>What is most interesting is the presence of chaplains in places not typically thought to be “religious.” </p>
<p>For example, chaplains are increasingly present in <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/protest-chaplains-shepherd-protests">social movements</a> including Occupy, <a href="https://www.faithmattersnetwork.org/resources-for-care-in-the-face-of-violence-and-trauma/">Black Lives Matter</a> and <a href="https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2016/12/15/standing-rock-chaplains-attended-to-needs-after-joyful-news/">Standing Rock</a>. They provide a steady presence to protesters grappling with existential questions amid deep tensions that characterize such situations. </p>
<p>An interesting example is that of Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Everett <a href="https://reveverett.com/">serves as a bicycle chaplain</a>. When cyclists are killed in traffic in the greater Boston area, she places white bicycles on the sites and leads services of remembrance for community members. </p>
<p>The point being, even when people are skeptical or distant from religious organizations, many remain personally spiritual. Millennials, especially, are gathering in athletic groups and activist organizations – not congregations - to build community and support personal growth. And they too <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a32a872ace8649fe18ae512/t/5a6f3b9bec212de83ac81b77/1517239214228/How_We_Gather_Digital_4.11.17.pdf">are being joined by chaplains</a> who accompany them through life in ways traditional clergy have done in the past.</p>
<p>In view of this trend, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/spiritual-care-in-changing-times-initial-glimpses_us_5a3841d7e4b0c12e6337b004">a quarter of theological schools</a> are focusing attention directly on chaplaincy as their overall enrollment numbers continue to decline. Might this reflect a long-term shift in American religious life?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Cadge receives funding from FISH </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Skaggs receives funding from FISH. </span></em></p>The traditional role of chaplains is changing. They are increasingly present in social movements such as Occupy, Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter.Wendy Cadge, Professor of Sociology and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis UniversityMichael Skaggs, Executive Director, Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853512017-10-08T23:13:45Z2017-10-08T23:13:45ZIndigenous people invented the so-called ‘American Dream’<p>When President Barack Obama <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-president-obama-act-legally-in-issuing-his-executive-order-on-immigration-34734">created</a> Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the 2012 program that offered <a href="https://undocu.berkeley.edu/legal-support-overview/what-is-daca/">undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children a path into society</a>, for a moment the ideals of the American Dream seemed, at least for this group, real. </p>
<p>We call these kids, many of whom are now adults, “<a href="https://unitedwedream.org/about/projects/deferred-action/">Dreamers</a>,” because they are chasing the American Dream – a <a href="https://psmag.com/news/economic-mobility-is-fading-and-so-is-the-american-dream">national aspiration for upward economic mobility built on physical mobility</a>. Fulfilling your dreams often means following them wherever they may lead – even into another country. </p>
<p>The Trump administration’s decision to <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-trump-be-holding-dreamers-hostage-to-make-mexico-pay-for-his-border-wall-82727">cancel DACA</a> – which is currently on hold while it is <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/DACA-s-end-was-delayed-but-Houston-s-13222292.php">litigated in the courts</a> – and <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/construction-begins-wall-prototypes">build a U.S.-Mexico border wall</a> has endangered those dreams by subjecting 800,000 young people to deportation. </p>
<p>But the <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/sep/05/fact-checking-attorney-general-jeff-sessions-remar/">notion underlying both Trump’s DACA repeal and the wall</a> – which is that “<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/09/05/andrea_mitchell_sessions_use_of_illegal_aliens_is_offensive_not_correct.html">illegal</a>” immigrants, most of them from Mexico, are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/us/immigrants-arent-taking-americans-jobs-new-study-finds.html?_r=0">stealing U.S. jobs</a> and hurting society – reflects a profound misunderstanding of American history.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/indigenous-peoples-day-replace-columbus-day-los-angeles-county-677982">Indigenous Peoples Day</a>, it’s worth underscoring something that many archaeologists know: Many of the values that inspire the <a href="http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol7/iss1/22/">American Dream</a> – liberty, <a href="https://lonang.com/commentaries/conlaw/religious-liberty/c71c/">equality</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2014/06/19/immigration-and-the-american-dream-part-1/">the pursuit of happiness</a> – date back to well <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/texas-annexation">before the creation of the U.S.-Mexico border</a> and before freedom-seeking Pilgrim immigrants arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620. </p>
<p>They originate with native North Americans.</p>
<h2>A Native American dream</h2>
<p>The modern rendition of the American Dream can be traced back to 1774, when Virginia’s governor, John Murray, the fourth earl of Dunmore, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Origins_of_the_American_Revolution.html?id=DlmrAAAAIAAJ">wrote</a> that even if Americans “attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west.”</p>
<p>The actual term “American Dream” was popularized in 1931 by the businessman and historian <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4078384/">James Truslow Adams</a>. For him, its realization depended on not just being able to better oneself but also, through movement and human interaction, seeing your neighbors bettered as well. </p>
<p>The first peoples to come to the Americas also came in search of a better life. </p>
<p>That happened 14,000 years ago in the last Ice Age when <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/">nomadic pioneers</a>, ancestors to modern Native Americans and First Nations, arrived from the Asian continent and roamed freely throughout what now comprises Canada, the United States and Mexico. Chasing <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/30/10972">mammoth, ancient bison and the elephant-like Gomphothere</a>, they moved constantly to secure the health of their communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189074/original/file-20171005-14904-99olmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The indigenous communities of the Americas knew none of these modern-day national borders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Early_Localization_Native_Americans_USA.jpg">USGS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A more recent example of the power of migration reappears about 5,000 years ago, when <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/107/11/E33.full">a large group of people from what is today central Mexico</a> spread into the American Southwest and farther north, settling as far up as western North America. With them they brought corn, which now <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/trade/#US">drives a significant part of the American economy</a>, and a way of speaking that birthed over 30 of the 169 <a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-10.pdf">contemporary indigenous languages</a> still spoken in the United States today.</p>
<h2>The Hohokam</h2>
<p>This globalist world view was alive and well 700 years ago as well when people from what is now northern Arizona fled a decades-long drought and rising authoritarianism under religious leaders. </p>
<p>Many migrated hundreds of miles south to southern Arizona, joining the Hohokam – <a href="http://www.tonation-nsn.gov/history-culture/">ancestors to modern O’odham nations</a> – who had long thrived in the harsh Sonoran desert by <a href="https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/free-resources/fact-sheets/who-or-what-is-the-hohokam/">irrigating vast fields of agave, corn, squash, beans and cotton</a>.</p>
<p>When the northern migrants arrived to this hot stretch of land around the then-nonexistent U.S.-Mexico frontier, Hohokam religious and political life was controlled by a handful of elites. Social mechanisms restricting the accumulation of power by individuals had slowly broken down. </p>
<p>For decades after their arrival, migrants and locals interacted. From that exchange, a Hohokam cultural revolution grew. Together, the two communities created a commoners’ religious social movement that <a href="https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/prelude/">archaeologists call Salado</a>, which featured a feasting practice that invited all village members to participate. </p>
<p>As ever more communities adopted this <a href="http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/boehm.pdf">equitable tradition</a>, political power – which at the time was embedded in religious power – became more equally spread through society. </p>
<p>Elites lost their control and, eventually, abandoned their temples.</p>
<h2>America’s egalitarian mound-builders</h2>
<p>The Hohokam tale unearths another vaunted American ideal that originates in indigenous history: equality. </p>
<p>Long before it was codified in the <a href="https://lonang.com/commentaries/conlaw/religious-liberty/c71c/">Declaration of Independence,</a>, equality was enacted through the building of large <a href="http://publications.newberry.org/indiansofthemidwest/people-places-time/eras/moundbuilders/">mounds</a>.</p>
<p>Massive earthen structures like these are often acts of highly hierarchical societies – think of the pyramids of the ancient Egyptians, constructed by <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html">masses of laborers</a> as the final resting place of <a href="http://archive.archaeology.org/0705/etc/pyramid.html">powerful pharaohs</a>, or those of the <a href="http://www.aztec-history.com/ancient-aztec-government.html">rigid, empire-building</a> Aztecs.</p>
<p>But great power isn’t always top-down. <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1435">Poverty Point</a>, in the lower Mississippi River Valley of what’s now Louisiana, is a good example. This massive site, which consists of five mounds, six concentric semi-elliptical ridges and a central plaza, was built some 4,000 years ago by hunter-fisher-gatherers with little entrenched hierarchy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189073/original/file-20171005-14086-io4f9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poverty Point: a city built on cooperation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poverty_Point_Aerial_HRoe_2014.jpg">Herb Roe/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Originally, archaeologists <a href="https://source.wustl.edu/2013/01/archaic-native-americans-built-massive-louisiana-mound-in-less-than-90-days-research-confirms/">believed</a> that such societies without the inequality and authoritarianism that defined the ancient Egyptian, Roman, and Aztec empires could not have constructed something so significant – and, if so, only over decades or centuries.</p>
<p>But excavations in the last 20 years have revealed that large sections of Poverty Point were <a href="http://www.saa.org/Portals/0/SAA/Publications/thesaaarchrec/nov08.pdf">actually constructed in only a few months</a>. These Native Americans organized in groups to undertake massive projects as a communal cooperative, leaving a built legacy of equality across America’s landscape.</p>
<h2>The consensus-building Haudenosaunee</h2>
<p>The Haudenosaunee, or <a href="http://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/aboutus.html">Iroquois</a>, offer a more modern example of such consensus-based decision-making practices.</p>
<p>These peoples – who’ve lived on both sides of the St. Lawrence river in modern-day Ontario and the U.S. Great Lakes states for <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002251">hundreds, if not thousands, of years</a> – built their society on collective labor arrangements.</p>
<p>They ostracized people who exhibited “selfish” behavior, and women and men often worked together in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/22366106/Emotion_work_and_the_archaeology_of_consensus_the_Northern_Iroquoian_case">large groups</a>. Everyone lived together in communal longhouses. Power was also shifted constantly to prevent hierarchy from forming, and decisions were made by coalitions of kin groups and communities. </p>
<p>Many of these participatory political practices <a href="http://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/confederacystructure.html">continue to this day</a>.</p>
<p>The Haudenosaunee sided with the British during the 1776 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-Revolution">American Revolution</a> and were largely driven off their land after the war. Like <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears">many native populations</a>, the Haudenosaunee Dream turned into a nightmare of invasion, <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/24/indians-slaves-and-mass-murder-the-hidden-history/">plague and genocide</a> as European migrants pursued their American Dream that excluded others.</p>
<h2>Native Americans at Standing Rock</h2>
<p>The long indigenous history of rejecting authoritarianism continues, including the 2016 battle for <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12181154/still-fighting-at-standing-rock/">environmental justice at Standing Rock</a>, South Dakota.</p>
<p>There, a resistance movement coalesced around a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/magazine/the-youth-group-that-launched-a-movement-at-standing-rock.html">horizontally organized youth group</a> that rejected the planned <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/standing-rock-one-year-later">Dakota Access oil pipeline</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189197/original/file-20171006-25784-ytzpfn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Native American pioneers continue to fight for the same ideals that inspire the American Dream, including equality and freedom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/NoDAPL-Drums-JohnDuffy.png">John Duffy/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The movement centered on an environmental cause in part because nature is sacred to the Lakota – and to <a href="https://nau.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/the-flower-world-in-prehistoric-southwest-material-culture">many other indigenous communities</a> – but also because communities of color often <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/environmental-justice-movement">bear the brunt of economic and urban development decisions</a>. </p>
<p>Standing Rock was the indigenous fight against repression and for the American Dream, gone 21st century.</p>
<h2>Redefining the North American dream</h2>
<p>Anthropologists and historians haven’t always recognized the quintessentially Native American ideals present in the American Dream. </p>
<p>In the early 19th century, the prominent social philosopher Lewis Henry Morgan <a href="http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid321.htm">called the Native Americans he studied “savages.”</a> And for centuries, America’s native peoples have seen their <a href="https://www.ohiohistory.org/learn/collections/archaeology/archaeology-blog/2011-(1)/june-2011/the-moundbuilder-myth">cultural heritage attributed to seemingly everyone but their ancestors</a> – even to an invented <a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/graham-hancock-announces-plans-to-investigate-mound-builder-myth-search-for-lost-white-race-in-america">“lost” white race</a>. </p>
<p>America’s indigenous past was not romantic. There were petty disputes, <a href="http://www.crowcanyon.org/researchreports/castlerock/text/crpw_finaldays.asp">bloody intergroup conflicts</a> and slavery, namely <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520206168">along the Northwest Coast</a> and <a href="http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803217591/">American Southeast</a>. </p>
<p>But the ideals of freedom and equality – and the right that Americans can move across this vast continent to seek it out – survive through the millennia. Societies based on those values have prospered here. </p>
<p>So the next time a politician invokes American values to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/09/05/ag-sessions-american-people-have-rightly-rejected-open-borders-policy.html">promote a policy of closed borders</a> or <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/249927-romney-jokes-hes-have-better-chance-at-white-house-if-dad-was-mexican">selfish individualism</a>, remember who originally espoused the American Dream – and first sought to live it, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lewis Borck received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Archaeology Southwest Preservation Fellowship Endowment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>D. Shane Miller is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University. </span></em></p>Anti-immigrant policies ignore that American ideals like liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness can be traced back to the indigenous pioneers who once moved freely across North America.Lewis Borck, Archaeologist, Leiden UniversityD. Shane Miller, Prehistoric Archeologist, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/692712016-12-16T03:19:53Z2016-12-16T03:19:53Z‘Slacktivism’ that works: ‘Small changes’ matter<p>In 2013, <a href="https://www.change.org/p/no-more-steubenvilles-educate-coaches-about-sexual-assault">an online petition</a> persuaded a national organization representing high school coaches to develop materials to <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/girls-tweeting-not-twerking-their-way-to-power/">educate coaches about sexual assault and how they could help reduce assaults by their athletes</a>. Online petitions have changed decisions by major corporations (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/02/petition-bank-of-america-debit-card-fee">ask Bank of America</a> about its debit card fees) and affected decisions on policies as diverse as those related to <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/06/funny-die-helped-congress-finally-agree-something/">survivors of sexual assault</a> and <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digitally-enabled-social-change">local photography permitting requirements</a>. Organizing and participating in these campaigns has also been <a href="https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/reflections-on-digitally-enabled-social-change-activism-in-the-internet-age/">personally meaningful</a> to many. </p>
<p>But, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell">a nostalgia for 1960s activism leads many to assume that “real” protest only happens on the street</a>. Critics assume that classic social movement tactics such as rallies and demonstrations <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/29/the-fall-and-rise-from-we-shall-overcome-to-we-are-the-world.html">represent the only effective model for collectively pressing for change</a>. Putting your body on the line and doing that collectively for decades is viewed as the only way “people power” works. Engaging online in “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism">slacktivism</a>” is a waste, making what cultural commentator Malcolm Gladwell has called “<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell">small change</a>.”</p>
<p>This amounts to a debate over the “right way” to protest. And it’s <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/hillary-clinton-president-change-org-donald-trump-electoral-college/">bound to heat up</a>: The election of Donald Trump is pushing <a href="https://grist.org/living/environmental-organizations-see-an-outpouring-of-support-post-election/">many people who have not previously engaged</a> <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-trump-advocacy-20161112-story.html">in activism</a> to look for ways to get involved; others are redoubling their efforts. People have a range of possible responses, including doing nothing, using online connections to mobilize and publicize support and protesting in the streets – or some combination of tactics.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/informing-activists/">social movement scholar</a> and someone who believes we should leverage all assets in a challenge, I know that much social good can come from mass involvement – and <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digitally-enabled-social-change">research shows that includes online activism</a>. The key to understanding the promise of what I prefer to call “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Net-Effect-Cyberadvocacy-Political-Landscape/dp/1879617463">flash activism</a>” is considering the bigger picture, which includes all those people who care but are at risk of doing nothing.</p>
<h2>Most people are apathetic</h2>
<p>Social movement scholars have known for decades that most people, even if they agree with an idea, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095297">don’t take action to support it</a>. For most people upset by a policy decision or a disturbing news event, the default is not to protest in the streets, but rather to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095324">watch others as they do</a>. Getting to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470999103.ch16">the point where someone acts as part of a group</a> is a milestone in itself.</p>
<p>Decades of research show that <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digitally-enabled-social-change">people will be more willing to engage in activism that is easy, and less costly</a> – emotionally, physically, or financially. For example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-the-mass-check-in-at-standing-rock-tell-us-about-online-advocacy-68276">more than a million people used social media</a> to “check in” at the Standing Rock Reservation, center of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Far fewer people – <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38087180">just a few thousand</a> – have traveled to the North Dakota camps to brave the arriving winter weather and risk arrest.</p>
<p>Once people are primed to act, it’s important not to discourage them from taking that step, however small. Preliminary findings from my team’s current research suggest that people just beginning to explore activism can be disheartened by bring criticized for doing something wrong. Part of the reason people volunteer is to feel good about themselves and effective about changing the world. Shaming them for making “small change” is a way to reduce numbers of protesters, not to increase them. Shaming can also create a legacy of political inactivity: Turning kids off from involvement now could encourage decades of disengagement.</p>
<h2>‘Success’ takes many forms</h2>
<p>“Flash activism,” the label I prefer for online protest forms such as online petition, can be effective at influencing targets in specific circumstances. Think of a flash flood, where the debilitating rush of involvement overwhelms a system. Numbers matter. Whether you are a high school coach, Bank of America, the Obama administration or a local council member, an overwhelming flood of signatures, emails and phone calls can be quite persuasive.</p>
<p>Further, all that 1960s-era street-style protest is effective only in certain circumstances. Research shows it can be very <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4495030">good at bringing attention to topics</a> that should be on the public or policymakers’ agenda. But historically protests are <a href="http://responsivegov.eu/images/documents/Caren.pdf">less successful at changing entrenched opinions</a>. For instance, once you have an opinion about abortion access, it is fairly difficult for movements to get people to change their views. And, while the protests we are so nostalgic for sometimes succeeded, <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107539211">they also often fail where policy change is concerned</a>.</p>
<h2>The glass can be half-full</h2>
<p>Online protest is easy, nearly cost-free in democratic nations, and can help drive positive social change. In addition, flash activism can help build stronger movements in the future. If current activists view online support as an asset, rather than with resentment because it is different from “traditional” methods, they can mobilize vast numbers of people.</p>
<p>Take, for example, the “<a href="http://invisiblechildren.com/kony-2012/">Kony 2012</a>” viral video campaign calling for the arrest of indicted war criminal Joseph Kony. Some <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/business/media/kony-2012-video-illustrates-the-power-of-simplicity.html">hated the campaign</a>; others highlighted its ability to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/opinion/kristof-viral-video-vicious-warlord.html">draw attention to an issue many thought Americans wouldn’t care about</a>. Think about the possibilities. Would Planned Parenthood be unhappy if 100 million Americans watched a persuasive short movie on abortion rights as civil rights today, and shared it with friends? Would the effort “matter”; would it help drive the direction of the public conversation about abortion?</p>
<p>And flash activism isn’t necessarily just a one-time game of numbers; MoveOn showed that with a big enough membership base, you could mobilize large numbers repeatedly. People who participate in one online action may join future efforts, or even broaden their involvement in activism. For example, <a href="http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/sites/default/files/publications/Participatory_Politics_New_Media_and_Youth_Political_Action.2012.pdf">kids who engage in politics online often do other political activities as well</a>.</p>
<h2>Many hands make light work</h2>
<p>Critics often worry that valuing <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/29/the-fall-and-rise-from-we-shall-overcome-to-we-are-the-world.html">flash activism will “water down” the meaning of activism</a>. But that misses the point and is counterproductive. The goal of activism is social change, not nostalgia or activism for activism’s sake. Most people who participate in flash activism would not have done more – rather, they would have done nothing at all. </p>
<p>Worse yet, when people denigrate flash activism, they are driving away potential allies. Critics of online efforts no doubt know that not everyone is willing to march or rally – but they miss the important potential for others to take actions that support and actually result in change.</p>
<p>Scholars and advocates alike should stop asking if flash activism matters. We should also stop assuming that offline protest always succeeds. Instead, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1944-2866.POI357">we should seek out the best ways to achieve specific goals</a>. Sometimes the answer will be an online petition, sometimes it will be civil disobedience and sometimes it will be both – or something else entirely.</p>
<p>The real key for grassroots social change is to engage as many people as possible. That will require flexibility on how engagement occurs. <a href="https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/informing-activists/">If people want larger and more effective social movements</a>, they should be working to find ways to include everyone who will do anything, not upholding an artificial standard of who is a “real activist” and who is not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Earl receives funding from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Much social good can come from mass involvement – and research shows that includes online activism. The bigger picture takes in all those people who care but are at risk of doing nothing.Jennifer Earl, Professor of Sociology, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700162016-12-07T02:10:41Z2016-12-07T02:10:41ZHow Standing Rock became a site of pilgrimage<p>The Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for investigating, developing and maintaining water and related environmental resources, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/us/federal-officials-to-explore-different-route-for-dakota-pipeline.html?_r=0">recently announced</a> that they would not allow the Dakota Access pipeline to be constructed under the Missouri River and through <a href="https://ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=42">Lakota territory</a>. </p>
<p>This decision essentially ended the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s protest against the pipeline, which they claimed would both desecrate their sacred sites and cause potential environmental harm. </p>
<p>The Standing Rock Sioux tribe was able to achieve this victory in part because of the assistance of thousands of “water protectors.” In his letter of thanks, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman David Archambault Jr. <a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/12/05/standing-rock-could-not-come-far-alone">wrote</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Standing Rock could not have come this far alone. Hundreds of tribes came together in a display of tribal unity not seen in hundreds of years. And many thousands of indigenous people from around the world have prayed with us and made us stronger.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thousands of people, both those within Native American communities and their non-Native allies, felt called to go to Standing Rock. But what drew that many people to Standing Rock? </p>
<p>As a Native American scholar of environmental history and religion, I believe that for most individuals who gathered at the site, it was a modern-day pilgrimage.</p>
<p>Here’s why.</p>
<h2>Idea of pilgrimage</h2>
<p>First, what is a pilgrimage? Anthropologists <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0074.xml">Victor Turner</a> and <a href="https://anthropology.virginia.edu/faculty/profile/elt9w">Edith Turner</a> in their classic study <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/image-and-pilgrimage-in-christian-culture/9780231157919">“Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture”</a> addressed that question when they researched the personal motivations of those who traveled long distances on pilgrimage. </p>
<p>Their answer was twofold. The Turners contended that individuals on a spiritual quest seek both an “out of this ordinary world” experience and a sense of community, “unity” or “oneness” with those on a similar quest. Individuals on a pilgrimage usually have these experiences both while traveling to certain places of transcendence and while at those sacred places. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148932/original/image-20161206-15197-1sf50ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What does pilgrimage mean?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40969298@N05/28861524604/in/photolist-LL4rzs-KYsca7-Lu7r7w-LL4ph1-KYDTXg-LSAxaG-LVAn4F-Lu4yG7-LKZUrS-LVAfei-LVAcjk-KYAKvc-LSynhj-KYABkK-KYAy18-KYp2SW-LVzX7n-LSyc3G-KYoRKb-KYoQbQ-LVzPVi-LNvACx-LNvzhr-LKZnVG-LNvwnP-LSxZzb-KYoHjU-LSxYcm-LVzEuz-LNvq84-LSxTBj-KYox31-LKZ6X9-Lu3GeU-LVzgW8-LSxDKw-KYzE28-KYoaXW-LtYLbu-LNqX1X-LNqUt2-LNqRfD-LVuYoR-LVuVLX-LKUuC9-KYiGeh-LKUqab-KYvpL2-LSsESS-LrrLn7">Joe Brusky</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/ac/people/faculty/pdeloria.html">Lakota scholar Philip Deloria</a>, has also described how the transformative experience of Native American sacred places provides meaning and personal growth for individuals who journey to be in their presence. In the book <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_khgtBPZZyYC&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=American+Indian+Places:+A+Historical+Guidebook+edited+by+Frances+Kennedy&source=bl&ots=3WlSgx0WaL&sig=iPXgS4AFnkhMNN0CZO_8ZQFz1FQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjksLHw6d_QAhUCMGMKHf4_D6YQ6AEIYzAK#v=onepage&q=American%20Indian%20Places%3A%20A%20Historical%20Guidebook%20edited%20by%20Frances%20Kennedy&f=false">“American Indian Places</a>,” Deloria discusses how people are likely to return to these important places again and again. </p>
<p>Going to Standing Rock evolved into a pilgrimage for many Native Americans: they left their “ordinary” lives behind to journey to a Lakota sacred place, and participate in a larger collective action.</p>
<p>My cousin Renee LaPier and her daughter Modesta LaPier, for example, journeyed 2,600 miles to and from Standing Rock. As Ojibwe women, with family on the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota, they felt inspired to go to Standing Rock after meeting hundreds of like-minded individuals at a “water protectors” gathering they organized in their hometown of Portland, Oregon. </p>
<p>Going to Standing Rock forced them and others to step out of their “ordinary” modern lives and travel to a remote rural area of the U.S. with few amenities including no cellphone coverage. And once at the site, they encountered a transformative experience. Reflecting on her experience, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/09/crowd_protests_dakota_access_p.html">Renee said</a>, “It’s personal. It’s deeply deeply personal. It’s important for all of us to stand up together.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148933/original/image-20161206-13648-1oo1gd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Going on a pilgrimage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40969298@N05/29406026821/in/photolist-LL4rzs-KYsca7-Lu7r7w-LL4ph1-KYDTXg-LSAxaG-LVAn4F-Lu4yG7-LKZUrS-LVAfei-LVAcjk-KYAKvc-LSynhj-KYABkK-KYAy18-KYp2SW-LVzX7n-LSyc3G-KYoRKb-KYoQbQ-LVzPVi-LNvACx-LNvzhr-LKZnVG-LNvwnP-LSxZzb-KYoHjU-LSxYcm-LVzEuz-LNvq84-LSxTBj-KYox31-LKZ6X9-Lu3GeU-LVzgW8-LSxDKw-KYzE28-KYoaXW-LtYLbu-LNqX1X-LNqUt2-LNqRfD-LVuYoR-LVuVLX-LKUuC9-KYiGeh-LKUqab-KYvpL2-LSsESS-LrrLn7">Joe Brusky</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Modern-day pilgrimage</h2>
<p>It is not just Native Americans who have gone to Standing Rock. On Dec. 5 an estimated 2,000 U.S. veterans, both Native American and their non-Native allies, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/veterans-north-dakota-standing-rock.html?_r=0">made their pilgrimage</a> to Standing Rock in a freezing blizzard. They came from across the U.S. and other parts of the world; they represented American veterans from many conflicts and wars, including older Korean and Vietnam vets and younger Iraqi vets. They said they came to Standing Rock for “peace and prayer.” </p>
<p>What does this mean?</p>
<p>Religious scholar <a href="https://www.cmich.edu/colleges/chsbs/PHLREL/Religion/Faculty/Pages/default.aspx">Laurel Zwissler</a> has studied why and how young people are “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739127940/Feminist-Spirituality-The-Next-Generation">refocusing their personal religious practices</a>” to include “religious practice with public action.” She explains how they are blending their individual religious ideas and political activism into a new form of religious expression.</p>
<p>Zwissler’s research reveals participating in protests, even those across a great distance, becomes a new place of individual and collective spiritual practice.</p>
<p>Many Native Americans and non-Native allies viewed going to Standing Rock as a pilgrimage. I have read <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ShaileneWoodley/">hundreds</a> of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MarkRuffalo/">social media posts</a> of people who were drawn to go there as a spiritual quest, reflecting on how the experience changed their sense of identity, gave meaning to their lives, provided a sense of community and transformed them forever. </p>
<p>Even Chairman David Archambault Jr., in an address to the veterans, said their pilgrimage had meaning because “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/veterans-north-dakota-standing-rock.html">What you’re doing is sacred.</a>” </p>
<p>I believe a modern kind of pilgrimage for Native Americans is emerging in which people travel to sites of collective action as a form of religious practice. It is true that some come for personal goals of spiritual awakening and some to journey to a sacred place. And, there are others who undertake a spiritual journey to find community, and purpose. </p>
<p>In the end, utilizing prayer and ceremony, they would have all experienced a pilgrimage – returning to their home different from when they left.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70016/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosalyn R. LaPier is affiliated with Saokio Heritage. </span></em></p>Thousands of people, both those within Native American communities and their non-Native allies, felt called to go to Standing Rock. What was the motivation?Rosalyn R. LaPier, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, Environmental Studies and Native American Religion, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.