Standing Rock, other water issues call forth wellspring of activism
The show is a “gesture of solidarity for all communities being affected by waterrelated issues.”
Water as a political flash point has gained new relevance after protesters in North Dakota spent more than six months trying to defeat a pipeline that would run through tribal grounds and threaten the Standing Rock Sioux’s water supply. That struggle — and the broader struggle around water-related issues — has become the focal point of a new exhibition at San Francisco’s Galería de la Raza.
The show, called “Échame Aguas” (translated as “keep a lookout for me”), is billed as a “gesture of solidarity for all communities being affected by water-related issues that threaten the well-being and existence of our Earth.” These sorts of struggles include not just the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, but also activism around drinking water in Flint, Mich., the way lack of water leads to immigrant deaths and the broader issues around extinction and fracking. The show is multidisciplinary and presents both artistic and documentary photography as well as printmaking and other mixed-media visual art pieces. In one display, Madison Hye Long offers up editorial photographs of the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota, many of them landscapes, which serves to offer a very different perspective from those most frequently seen in newspaper pages and on television screens.