Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock. Directed by Josh Fox, James Spione, and Myron Dewey. Bullfrog, 2017. 89 minutes.

We Are Unarmed. Directed by Gwendolen Cates. GOOD DOCS, 2022. 76 minutes.

In early 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which would carry oil from the Bakken oil shales, secured the approvals necessary for its construction to proceed. The pipeline route crossed the Missouri River at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation—lands governed by historic treaties—and directly threatened the water supply for those living on reserve lands. The protest camp established in the spring by tribal members to block construction of the pipeline grew through the summer and into the fall, reaching a peak of over ten thousand people: Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists, water protectors, veterans, and allies. Police and state aggression in support of the DAPL culminated in the late fall of 2016, with activists injured by water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Soon thereafter, the US Army Corps of Engineers halted construction on the pipeline to allow for environmental impact studies. As the protest camp came down in early 2017, Donald Trump granted the easement needed for the pipeline without requiring further environmental assessment, and DAPL construction resumed.

The Standing Rock camp and #NoDAPL protests generated enormous international media attention. In the years since, several films have been released sharing stories from the protest camp and its larger significance, including Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock and We Are Unarmed.1 These two documentaries center and amplify Indigenous voices and perspectives on Standing Rock and would be of greatest interest to students and teachers of environmental studies, Indigenous studies, history, activism and social movements, and media studies.

Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock consists of three short films, each with different directors, writers, and themes, woven together in a dreamlike composition. Part 1 opens with the voice of Floris White Bull (cowriter alongside director Josh Fox) telling of a dream she had. From here, this part proceeds to tell the story of Standing Rock with attention to Indigenous values and spirituality, including the prophecy of a black snake that would one day poison the land. Part 2, directed by James Spione, juxtaposes footage of protesters of all ages engaging in peaceful protest—smudging, working collectively in the camp, drumming, and chanting—with the violence of the police response during the darkness of night in late November. Throughout the film, we see helicopters flying overhead and the watchfulness of armed police. This concept of seeing and being seen is the focus of the final part directed by Myron Dewey, the sole Indigenous director in this documentary. Dewey captured dramatic drone footage, an act for which he was criminally charged. This part highlights themes of state surveillance and the criminalization of resistance, alongside the importance of asserting Indigenous perspectives. Through this tripartite approach, Awake sees the activism at Standing Rock as waking up a new generation of protesters to stand as water protectors against those supporting fossil fuels.

In We Are Unarmed, director Gwendolen Cates situates the story of Standing Rock in a broader context and highlights the perspectives of three Lakota women: Kelly Morgan, the tribal archaeologist; Phyllis Young, a negotiator and spokesperson; and Holly Elk Lafferty, an active member of the camp. In this film, the protests at Standing Rock are revealed as merely the latest episode in a long history of colonialism, genocide, and Indigenous sovereignty. As such, Cates and her three main interlocutors draw attention to larger structures: the ongoing struggle to have treaty rights respected and the deeply rooted racism and white supremacy shaping state, police, and DAPL actions. Filmmaker Cates emphasizes the importance of nonviolent direct action to the protesters, apparent in the film title itself, We Are Unarmed, a phrase posted throughout the camp.

Across these two films, there is much shared visual imagery and thematic overlap. Myron Dewey’s drone footage is used in each, as are images of the many tribal flags flying at the camp. This overlap symbolizes the importance of this moment of intertribal solidarity, emphasizing not just Indigenous/non-Indigenous alliance. In a classroom context, Awake is suited to teaching centered on media, where it could be used alongside Finis Dunaway’s Defending the Arctic Refuge (2021), which explored a traveling slide show used to build a grassroots environmental movement in defense of Arctic and Gwich’in lands. We Are Unarmed would work in environmental studies and history courses and could be paired with Zoltán Grossman’s Unlikely Alliances (2017), which offers a larger perspective on what he calls Native-White alliances in defense of rural lands. Both films could be meaningfully shown alongside Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s Angry Inuk (2016), which challenges the often assumed solidarity between environmentalists and Indigenous communities. Likewise, Tyler McCreary’s (2024) and Anna Willow’s (2019) works serve as indispensable texts for teaching about colonial extractivism and Indigenous-led protest in a contemporary context and offer many points of informed discussion alongside these excellent and moving films.

1See also Isabel Dulfano’s review of End of the Line, another film about the DAPL protests, in this issue’s special feature.

Liza Piper is a professor of environmental history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Their research is focused on histories of colonialism, health, and resource extraction on lands that became western and northern Canada.