Excerpt from PDF…

This role play helps students recognize the issues at stake in the historic struggle of the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline. Before launching the role play, we wanted to give students a visceral and visual sense of the resistance under way along the Missouri River. …

We liked the idea of a role play for a couple reasons. Our first and most important goal was to create a context for students to confront the complex social reality of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the resistance movement to which it has given rise. That social reality includes the history and contemporary status of Indigenous rights, the power of the fossil fuel industry, the support for pipeline infrastructure from segments of organized labor, and the extent to which our government is protecting—or failing to protect—the land, water, and air. The role play asks students to explore these complicated dynamics as active participants.