item details
Overview
In April 2016, protests among many of the indigenous tribes of the United States, unifed in action against the oil pipeline, called the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is intended to carry 470, 000 barrels of crude oil per day over 2768 kilometres. The protest action has resulted in a lengthy occupation by Native American tribes of the territory that the pipelline is proposed to go through in North Dakota, which intersects with reservations and sacred lands. A key concern of the indigenous peoples has been the proposal for the pipeline to go under the Missouri River and the contamination danger this presents for the waterways. The site where much of the protest action is taking place is called Standing Rock.
The protestors have extensively used social media to draw attention to their plight and this strategy has included reaching out to other indigenous people across the world to help boost their resistance message. This tee-shirt was produced by a group called Toka Tu in response to that call, and is a message of solidarity by Maori to the Native people in North Dakota at Standing Rock.
Made in November 2016, this teitem is one of a series of protest tee-shirts that continue to be collected by Te Papa. Tee-shirts are easy and cheap to produce to reflect the fast moving nature of protest solidarity and unification. It is an important record of one Maori response to an international protest.