According to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, the first act of violence was extinguishing the connection peoples and the plants that co-create the landscape. She restates that the dominant story about North American peoples—as weak and unenlightened—not only reinforces the deceit of indigenous erasure, but that its repercussions endure today, largely through academic scholarship. The enduring violence is endures by constantly dismantling the rituals, ceremonies and belief systems between people and land.
1977: The year of this photographic moment was taken. 1977: The year questions began to arise about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a 19 million acre stretch of Alaskan coastline. In 1977, the year the construction of the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline System (TAPS) was completed.