An open letter to Standing Rock Chairman, Dave Archambault (from Lee Sprague, former Chairman of Little River Band of Ottawa Indians)

Never shoot sideways, or backwards into your own ranks, when in an Indian Fight. Your job is to keep the enemy in focus, describe the consequences of non action, and keep the people focused on the real enemy.

The Water Protectors, who you asked to come to your side to fight for clean water, peace and love, came to your side, and now you are going to throw them out, evict them in a manner similar to the North Dakota Oil Police and Mercenaries.

As I write this, you are blockading the Sacred Stone Camp, the Rosebud Camp, and the Great Cheyenne Nation’s camp, whose leader is focused on the real enemy, the Black Snake and Protecting Water for the seventh generations rights to a clean environment, for their seventh generation.

The Standing Rock Nations elected leaders are about to deliver to the Water Protectors, who they summoned to their side, a measured dose of Internal Colonization, and forcibly remove from the Camps, with the assistance of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, BIA, a blockade, similar to the one experienced just a couple of days ago. Other federal authorities you have authorized, will be participating in and supporting the forced removal of Water Protectors. This does not include the peoples of the Great Standing Rock Sioux Nation, many of whom are in support of the Water Protectors who have sought shelter and refuge on the Reservation areas under your leadership.

History has a way of remembering those who fire into their own ranks, in an Indian Fight, and your sir, will be remembered by your seventh generation. I would have thought that history, your own history, of leaders, siding with the colonizers, the United States of America, against their own people.

We, Water Protectors live for the well wishes of the Seventh Generation, fighting for clean water, peacefully, with love and great dignity.

What will your seventh generation of children think of your actions, forcing the removal of many Nations of Peoples and Allied Water Protectors?

Remember, the Youth of Your nation, the Great Peoples of Standing Rock, started this movement.

Good luck with the with your role, in the long history of resistance on Turtle Island. You will be remembered, as will the Water Protectors, and our shared seventh generation will be the ones who will carry all of our works, into the living memory of their seventh generation.

Real Warriors, dear sir, will ride into the front lines backwards on their horse to distract the enemy, not fire backwards, and sideways into their own ranks.

Love and Peace to you dear sir, Chairman of the Great Standing Rock peoples.

Lee Sprague works extensively on Manoomin (Wild Rice) restoration efforts as a way to recover polluted or otherwise damaged ecosystems. He also holds a degree in International Indigenous Law from San Francisco State University and has served as Ogema or Chairman of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. As an elected Tribal Leader, Lee represented his nation’s interests on national and regional environmental policy issues. Lee is a recipient of the Glenn Miller Tribal Leader Award for Environmental Advocacy and Treaty Rights, and the Bunyan Bryant, Environmental Justice Award by the Sierra Club.