If Mother Earth could write a letter, I believe that her words would be only of love for all those who call her home. Like a true mother, however, I believe she would scold us for our actions against one another and our brother and sister animals around us.

I think we all fail to realize, in the span of how we all live, that she is quite small in comparison to the galaxies and the universe, and like our own mothers, her love is infinite and irreplaceable.  Without her there will be no beautiful songs from birds, no trees or plants to provide us air, no rivers or oceans to give life.

I believe if Mother Earth could write us a letter she would remind us that she is our home. I felt compelled to write this article about the Dakota Access Pipeline but in truth I feel I am writing about something much bigger: our home.

To give some facts about the Dakota Access Pipeline, it is a proposed 1,172 mile oil pipeline that will allow access to oil from the Three Forks and Bakken oil sites in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The construction of this pipeline will run just north of the sacred land of the Standing Rock Sioux, under the Missouri River to Lake Oahe. A potential leak would contaminate the primary source of clean drinking water. 

The land itself is deemed an extension flood plain, meaning land construction allowed would not be in the range of the water if the river happens to flood. It is deemed such by the United States Army Corp of Engineers, who coincidentally happen to be the ones to issue the permit for the pipeline after the route was changed to prevent contamination of the water supply of Bismarck.  With the land being deemed a flood plain, it overlaps with the native land. The permit was issued without going through the proper channels of permission from the native government. 

The history of this great country comes with a dark past. Native Americans were driven from their land with the settlement of the colonizers, pushing them unjustly onto reservations. This land that was given to the Sioux people is being threatened today. In accordance with that, not only is the sacred burial ground at risk of being bulldozed but the traditions and the history that should be passed down from the current generation to their grandchildren are also at risk of being lost. 

This week, the Sioux people took action standing for their rights, their land, their water, their homes and their families, and they were met with attack dogs, pepper spray, ridicule and threats. I believe these people are standing to defend more than North Dakota and the Standing Rock Reservation. They are defending the planet and life itself.

On a smaller scale, I must compel you to ask yourselves the unimaginable heartbreak that would come with the loss of your culture’s burial grounds, areas of prayer and worship and your history.  Now I pose these questions to you: How do you feel knowing that your planet has lost a majority of its natural habitat? How do you feel knowing that those who do not have a voice to protect their homes, the plants, the animals, the birds are losing their homes? How do you feel knowing that the implementation of this pipeline threatens the drinking water of many people, both on the Standing Rock Reservation and all those downstream?

The history of the Dakota people is under attack from commercially unsafe infrastructure that has proven to be dated, but what we fail to realize is that their history is a part of ours. There are other options that have proven to be healthier and cleaner than those of the oil pipeline such as solar, wind or hydroelectric power. They are about to implement a piece of technology that has potentially negative effects on nature that could cause irreparable damage to an entire sovereign nation of people. 

Many of those standing ground have been heard shouting “Mni Wiconi, Water is life!” They are right.  It is said in the Sioux history that water was the first medicine for the earth, giving nourishment to the plants and the animals and all of life.

The great Lakota chief and medicine man, Sitting Bull, once said “Every seed is awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this land.  Yet, hear me, people, we have now to deal with another race — small and feeble when our fathers first met them but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.”

I find it heartbreaking nearly 126 years later that this same fight is going on and the same statement still holds true. All relations, all people, all life share the resource of water.  We as a whole must stand up with the Dakota people and convey that what is happening is wrong. We are one. We are one people that walk this earth together and she does not see us divided by race, color, creed, gender or culture but as one that stands and acts as a whole, whether we feel whole or not.

My equitation riding teacher once told me the only fences that are my obstacle are the ones I have built myself and I think that statement applies everywhere. We are only limited by the boundaries we draw for ourselves and it seems we have chosen to draw the lines between one another but for what reason? For oil, money and perceived wealth.  All for resources that will not last indefinitely, we sacrifice the value of vitality for a temporary gain.

So when someone asked me what is really happening on our planet today, I must say that I think everyone is receiving a wakeup call to choose within their own heart and their own minds what kind of life they want for the future.

The natives call it the Seventh Generation, the generation that is coming, those we pass our planet down to. I hope each and every one of you asks yourselves if you choose to stand with the Sioux nation, not just about a pipeline but about what kind of world we want to live in. Will we choose greed and money and eventually death? Or will we choose to find positive solutions to these problems with the ability that we have through reaching out with love and compassion for our neighbors? 

I believe in the end it is up to us to choose. I choose to stand beside the Sioux people, I choose life, I choose healthy solutions and I choose love because that is the relation that we all share.  What will you choose?

Dakota Palacio is a senior studying animal science, aspiring to be a veterinarian.  She is the founder of the youth conservation and community service organization Beholdance which was founded in 2007.