Cover art by Mike Grell
“The Cascade Pipeline – also known as the Black Artery – cost over two billion dollars and runs over a thousand miles, from the Bakken oil formation in North Dakota to a Seattle refinery,” the Green Arrow: Rebirth comic book series explains. “It is supposed to slice through the heart of the Spokane Reservation but a month-long protest has halted the construction on either side.”
Although the events in Green Arrow are fictional, writer Benjamin Percyadded reflections of the real world into the narrative when the series launched in June 2016. Returning the title character to his “social justice warrior” roots, Oliver Queen and his superhero alter ego reside in a Seattle that resembles the Age of Donald Trump taken to the extreme, with a corrupt Queen Industries orchestrating a corporate takeover of the city while the lesser well-offs – from the homeless to immigrants to even Native Americans – are pushed further to the wayside.
Thus while the three-part narrative that begins with Green Arrow #18 is a fictional continuation of the overall storyline, its source of inspiration was the factual struggles of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in 2016 to prevent the Dakota Access Pipeline from traveling under nearby Lake Oahe and potentially polluting the reservation’s water supply. In both cases, peaceful protests were met with physical opposition from both public police and private militias determined to disrupt, disperse, and discourage their activities.
“This pipeline might be legal – for now – but violence against protesters is not,” Green Arrow replies when asked why he is helping the Native Americans. “People say I’ve got a big mouth. That’s because I believe in the right to protest. Anybody who tries to silence that right, I’m going to bully right back.”
While the Standing Rock Indian Reservation did not have a superhero to stand side-by-side with them like the Spokane Reservation in Green Arrow, they did have to endure the same bombardment of pepper spray, batons, tasers, and water cannons nonetheless. In that sense, each individual protester was a superhero when they refused to be back down against the onslaught.
“Although solidarity inside the Sioux Reservation was too strong to give into fear, those across the river would nevertheless put it to the test,” journalist Bikem Ekberzade wrote in her 2018 book Standing Rock: Greed, Oil and the Lakota’s Struggle for Justice. “Intimidation tactics were soon employed, with unarmed protesters being gassed, charged at by attack dogs and, as the incorrigible Dakota winter took hold, blasted by water cannons at sub-zero temperatures in an attempt to contain and discourage them.”
In Green Arrow, groups of white supremacists and citizen militias join the police in opposition to the protests. At Standing Rock, meanwhile, TigerSwan – a private company founded by former members of the United States Delta Force – employed “military-style counterterrorism measures” to complement police efforts. They also used an informant to gather information and create division within the ranks of the protesters.
The protesters themselves in both Green Arrow and at Standing Rock were a conglomerate of locals and outsiders. Although tribal leaders initially balked at Green Arrow’s offer of assistance, however, the influx of new protesters from across the country were immediately welcomed at Standing Rock.
“I said, anybody who comes stands with me, stands with me,” LaDonna Bravebull Allard, who organized the first protest camp, explained to Bikem Ekberzade. “I don’t care if you are blue, purple or orange, I don’t care how you pray or what you pray to, you come stand with me, you are welcome. And I stayed like that. And with that I’ve been so honored to be a part of so many cultures.”
While Native Americans and even Green Arrow rode horses during their battle at the Spokane Reservation, the Standing Rock Reservation relied on another tribal tradition during their own efforts to fight against the pipeline. Before Europeans began settling in North America, a small segment of the Native American population was routinely trained as long-distance runners in order to quickly spread information amongst the various tribes. During the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, young Lakota natives undertook “water runs,” including an eight-day trip to Omaha, Nebraska, to hand deliver a message against the pipeline to the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, as well as a twenty-eight day run to relay a similar message in Washington, D.C.
In both the Green Arrow comic book and Bikem Ekberzade’s Standing Rock: Greed, Oil and the Lakota’s Struggle for Justice, the protests are not depicted as stand-alone events but part of an ongoing struggle by Native Americans against “foreign” oppressors that goes back centuries. “We all know this has been a long time coming,” a tribal leader tells Green Arrow. “Since 1805 to be exact. That’s when the most famous lost white guys of all came canoeing down the Columbia. We should have fed Lewis and Clark to the grizzlies instead of trading with them, hey? Then maybe we wouldn’t be fighting for scraps today.”
Bikem Ekberzade likewise mentions the role of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the systematic removal of Native Americans from the western wilderness. The Missouri River was originally named Inyan Wakangapi Wakpa by the local Lakota, for instance, but Lewis and Clark renamed one its arteries the Cannonball River, in effect erasing Native American tradition from the future history of the region.
Lewis and Clark also misinterpreted the Native American concept of communal land ownership, concluding that outlying areas did not actually belong to the tribe even though it was used for hunting, burial grounds, and sacred rituals. This belief led to a land-grab by white settlers as they made their way westward and forced a continual relocation of Native Americans onto smaller tracts of land located further away from where they originally called home.
In Green Arrow, the Cascade Pipeline is owned by Queen Industries, whose CEO orchestrated the framing of Oliver Queen for murder as part of a plan to transform Seattle into a privately-funded “playground” for the rich. In the real world, the Dakota Access Pipeline was the byproduct of Energy Transfer Partners and, to a smaller extent, Phillips 66. According to financial disclosures made to the Federal Election Committee in 2015 by presidential candidate Donald Trump, the future president had “heavily invested” in both companies, although the amount was lower when similar disclosures were released in 2016.
Although the protests at Standing Rock achieved a partial victory in December 2016 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers refused to grant the necessary easement for the pipeline to traverse underneath the Oahe Reservoir, it was short-lived. A now President Trump issued an executive order in February 2017 that not only gave the Dakota Access Pipeline a green light but blocked any further studies on whether the pipeline could cause environmental damage to the area.
In the Green Arrow comic book, Green Arrow and fellow superheroes Black Canary and Arsenal assist the Native Americans in defeating a citizen militia group employed by Queen Industries to physically remove Natives from the area. Believing that the Spokane Reservation finally has enough evidence against Queen Industries to continue their fight in court, Green Arrow and his cohorts metaphorically ride off into the sunset.
The struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline likewise continued within the legal system, but as Bikem Ekberzade points out in Standing Rock: Greed, Oil and the Lakota’s Struggle for Justice, the courts are the one arena where corporations are most comfortable fighting. While large companies have the financial resources to drag proceedings on for years, such a fight can often drain the bank accounts of those in opposition. The slow pace of the legal system, meanwhile, results in less media attention, especially compared to the visually dramatic images of physical protests.
While happy endings may be the norm in the world of comic books, they are often harder to attain in real life. But just like Green Arrow continued to fight as a self-proclaimed “social justice warrior” in the Rebirth comic book series of writer Benjamin Percy, the same holds true for Native American warriors and their struggle to keep their heritage and dignity intact. Green Arrow depicts the fight against the Cascade Pipeline as a continuation of that centuries-long struggle, and Bikem Ekberzade does the same within Standing Rock: Greed, Oil and the Lakota’s Struggle for Justice.
One story may be fictional and the other factual, but they share the same DNA nonetheless, proving that superheroes exist not only in comic books but the real world as well.
Anthony Letizia