Standing Strong: The birth of a Native American Civil Rights


  • Photographer
    Josue Rivas
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    Josue Rivas Foto
  • Date of Photograph
    2016-2017
  • Technical Info
    Canon 5D Mark 3,Sigma 35mm 1.4

For over six months, I lived in these prayer camps. In the summer of 2016, thousands of indigenous people and their allies had responded to the call by the Standing Sioux Tribe to come and to support them in their efforts to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. The 1,172 mile underground conduit would transport 570,000 barrels per day from the Bakken formations near the Canadian border, into North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, terminating in Illinois. Previously, this project was meant to run north of Bismarck, but local white residents refused the project because they feared oil contamination of their drinking water. Dakota Access Pipeline then decided to run the project a mile North of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Residents of the tribe considered it a possible environmental genocide, as well as a desecration of their historical cultural sites. The opposition sparked the largest gathering of indigenous nations in U.S. history.

You can create multiple entries, and pay for them at the same time.
Just go to your History, and select multiple entries that you would like to pay for.