Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands

Native young people and elders pray in sweat lodges at the Océti Sakówin camp, the North Dakota landscape outside blanketed in snow. In Oregon, white men and women in army surplus and western gear, some draped in the American flag, gather in the buildings of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The world witnessed two standoffs in 2016: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's protest against an oil pipeline in North Dakota and the armed takeover of Oregon's Malheur Wildlife Refuge led by the Bundy family. These events unfolded in vastly different ways, from media coverage to the reactions of law enforcement. In Standoff, Jacqueline Keeler examines these episodes as two sides of the same story that created America and its deep–rooted cultural conflicts.

"Rigorous analysis and personal storytelling invigorate Jacqueline Keeler's examination of Indigenous vs. colonial land tenure. Standoff recounts the historic legacy of treaty rights and sacred space underpinning Standing Rock's case against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and contrasts this legacy with the white entitlement as well as cultural land desecrations of the Bundy movement. Standoff is a powerful, illuminating book." —Louise Erdrich

"Jacqueline Keeler weaves personal experience, cultural awareness, and journalistic acumen to tell a compelling story that compares and contrasts two modern and historic Western encounters between federal land policy and the people who inhabit these lands. 'Whose land is it anyway?' Keeler ultimately asks, and finding the answer is a task that requires deep reflection from all of us who share these magnificent vistas." —CHRIS LA TRAY, author of Becoming Little Shell

"This is the kind of book we owe to young Indigenous kids. They deserve the truth, even if it hurts, and this brave, well–sourced journalism deserves to be named for what it will go down in history as: perhaps the most in–depth look at the #NoDAPL movement, coming from where it should: your nation and from within Indian country." —DESIREE KANE, journalist