Dr. Cornel West On His Experiences at Standing Rock

American not a nation of immigrants. I don't like that language because it overlooks indigenous peoples and involuntary immigrants like black people. And slavery was not America's original sin. That's another neoliberal lie that you hear all the time on the corporate media, as if indigenous people suffering has to be rendered invisible to highlight black people. What's one of the least discussed injustices of this nation, right? And then their current situation in these reservations with extreme alcoholism and drug addiction and social... Social misery and they still got their rich music and poetry and resistance, but the social conditions are just... They are the casualties of a settler, colonial enterprise, and we'd rather act as if they don't exist. I mean, we black people became central because our labor and our imagination and culture became central and we had a barbaric civil war, 750,000 people dead, each life precious. And that has been the central event and the shaping of America. So when people talk about race, they go straight to blackness as if indigenous peoples in redness is not integral to. It's just that they've been ridged so invisible and the vicious attack has been so immense. What's so complicated too that they have their own rules on the reservations. They're allowed to have gambling and they can have all sorts of... They have their own sovereignty in a certain way on the reservations. It's very odd. Oh, no, it's true. And I was blessed to be there in Standing Rock a couple of December's ago. It was one of the marvelous moments in my life to stand there with the group there. It was a multiracial group. People came from all around the world and I am inclined from Canada. For the most part, it was a matter of the indigenous peoples coming together. Days of wounded knee, 1890, over 400 people. Could you remind people what Standing Rock was about? Standing Rock was a struggle over that pipeline. Absolutely trying to put pressure on the Obama administration to ensure that a pipeline was not built that would violate the sacred lands and many of the sacred memories of indigenous peoples. And it was magnificent because you had the coming together of indigenous nations because part of the problem, this is true for all oppressed people, is fighting among themselves and the difficulty of coming together. This is the first time you had the coming together of a significant number of indigenous peoples nations unified against the greedy corporate elites who were trying to promote this pipeline through Canada all the way down to the southern section of the United States. And it was just... How's that all off? First, we got an announcement right when we were there. It was freezing too. It was December. And they were hosing people down too. Oh, Lord, yes. They were hosing people down, wetting them down while this is all going on. And it was about minus 15 or whatever it was. It was freezing up there. But no, we got an announcement from the Obama administration for a suspension of it because they had planned to do it too. Obama administration can be very accommodating to Wall Street interests and corporate elite interests and so forth, even given the image and spectacle of a black president being a progressive and what have you, much more progressive than Trump. That's not saying too much. But we got a suspension and the struggle continues really. And it sent tremendous ripples through the cultures of indigenous peoples and their nations in terms of coming together. And the fact that it was successful. Absolutely. And there was at least a relative victory. All these victories are relative, but very relative victory. It was beautiful just to see again. You can't downplay the role of joy though, brother. This is so very important. The joy in struggle. The joy in organizing. The joy in fighting for justice. The joy in the nightclubs. The joy in the churches and mosques and temples and synagogues. Joy is something that we need to come back to. That's one of the great secrets of the human conditions. What are the sources of joy? What are the conditions for the possibility of joy? We've been obsessed with pleasure for the last 100 years or so. And there's nothing wrong with pleasure, but pleasure is not the same thing as joy at all. When you look at the sparkling eyes of your precious daughter, that's not pleasure. That's joy. You and your wife. That's deep, deep joy. That's what endures. You could be broke as the Ten Commandments financially, but that memory will bring you joy. Thank you.