Last night, I attended Indigenous Voices of Resistance the night opened up with Brenda White Bull (Lakota, Standing Rock Sioux Citizen) who was also joined by she is a descendant of Sitting Bull . She is from a town of 250 people located in Standing Rock. Brenda spent 20 years in the Marine Corps and returned back home to represent for her community. The moderator then opened up the panel by first giving the speakers a chance to share their personal experience, we then watched a short clip entitled, “On the Anniversary of Sitting Bull’s Death, Meet His Great Great Granddaughter, Brenda White Bull.” (The Youtube video is below). Brenda spoke very passionately throughout the whole and night and at one point she became very emotional and the room felt very silent but we could all sympathize with her as she shared what brought her back to Standing Rock.

Some of the key points and quotes I took from that night that resonated with me were:

• “We never knew that we were in poverty because that’s what we enjoyed, we didn’t care about material things because our spirit enjoyed whoever was around us, so we never really quite knew what poverty was our company was good.”
• “The generational trauma that has been embedded in us before we were even born we’ve passed it on to our children. But knowing what our ancestors had been through I think about them and the past and they’ve been through a lot. I am not trying to compare the two, but they have really been through a lot. A lot of fighting just like what we are doing today, we were their dreams come true. We have to continue the fight it’s in our blood.”
• “Generational empowerment, generational strength”
• “We have to lead by good examples we have to teach our children that this fight and the fight that we’ve fought before us are a kind of fight that we are fighting over our same land.”
• “Who we are we’re still fighting for our identity of who we are We have to prove ourselves? Why should we have to prove ourselves?  When we are the first people of this country?