An important work of environmental and legal reportage on a contest that will likely continue for years.
Searching account of Native resistance to the oil pipeline that has steadily invaded their homelands.
Dakota Access, a company specializing in transporting oil from the vast Bakken fields of North Dakota and points beyond, had long had its way in securing easements for its pipeline across multiple states. Then, writes human rights lawyer Todrys, they ran into the Standing Rock Sioux, “who would not be bought off.” Indeed, the leadership of Standing Rock had allowed an escrow account meant to compensate the tribe for the loss of the Black Hills to reach $2 billion and go untouched: “The Sioux don’t want the money; they want the Black Hills.” Todrys examines the paths by which Native “water protectors,” many of them teenagers, and non-Native allies came together to resist Dakota Access’ legal onslaught. Not all of the Native people in the pipeline’s path joined in that resistance: She portrays one politician who made a fortune with an energy subcontracting firm of his own, which secured jobs for “oil companies that ostensibly operated under his tribe’s regulation” but pretty much did what they pleased. Those companies scored an early victory with the Trump administration. As it greenlighted the abrogation of tribal sovereign rights, it also relaxed environmental regulations and cheered the arrests of some 600 water protectors. Many Republican-led states, meanwhile, promulgated bills “aimed at restricting the right to peaceful assembly” so that similar protests could not be mounted again. Yet, as Todrys writes in this wide-ranging account, the legal wheels turn slowly. In March 2020, a federal judge demanded that the Army Corps of Engineers conduct the complete environmental review that Trump officials had dispensed with—a review that is ongoing under a new administration and that may close the pipeline, which has since leaked nearly 600,000 gallons of crude oil across the Dakotas.
An important work of environmental and legal reportage on a contest that will likely continue for years.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4962-2266-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bison/Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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