Indigenous youth ran to White House to demand Biden stop pipelines

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Indigenous Youth Ran to the White House
Video Still from Indigenous Youth Ran to the White House video

The following is from audio transcribed from a video by Aleksei Wagner posted to YouTube in April. The video deals with part of week of action conducted in early April that included indigenous youth, as a group of runners, taking their message about stopping pipelines to Washington, DC.

Here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biKrUd5pu08

#ShutdownDAPL and #StopLine3. We can’t wait any longer. #buildbackfossilfree

[Chanting as they run:] We run for our brothers and our sisters. We run. We run for our water, for life. We run, we run.

We are going to tell them what we want and they need to be for our future generations

Under our rights

Can’t drink oil

Can’t drink oil

[Different runners commenting:]

“Knowing that people are back home and they can’t be here today, our elders, our youth, our tiny babies, can’t be here to run for our clean water, so I run for them. And I run for clean water

“I run for our community, this is our life, our health, it’s our future at stake. Where these pipelines are placed is not by accident.

“The US government has pushed for the genocide and the erasure of our people for over 200 years, since the first contact. And we’re doing this work to become good ancestors one day.

“Before we had horses, before we had postal services, any type of messages that we did, we had runners to deliver those messages. So running is bringing back our historic way of life.

“My message to Biden is can you see us now, can you hear us now. We are still here. We sent this message five years ago, under Obama, when you were vice president, and now you can stop the Dakota Access pipeline, you can stop Line 3 you can stop fossil fuels forever under the US territories.

“The reason we are so against pipelines is because of the destruction of our land. The land is who we are. This is who we are.

“We came here to bring back the black snake because if the Biden-Harris administration doesn’t want this at their homes, then they should not bring it to ours.”

Stop Line 3.

Shut down DAPL.

We delivered 400,000 petition signatures.

Call the White House.

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