Phyllis Young
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A member of Standing Rock in North and South Dakota, Phyllis Young has been an American Indian rights activist (Lakota/Dakota) for more than 40 years. She is most widely known for her leadership role in the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline struggle in 2016 and 2017.[1] Young worked for Standing Rock from October 2015 to September 2017, ultimately as an organizer of the Oceti Sakowin Camp, where tens of thousands of protesters—known as “water protectors”—gathered over time to resist construction of the 1,172 mile long oil pipeline.[2]
Young is a longtime member of the American Indian Movement,[3] and as such she worked for and with Russell Means during his lifetime and other national Native American activists. In 1978 she co-founded Women of All Red Nations with Madonna Thunder Hawk.[4] Between 1993 and 2008 Young served on the board of the National Museum of the American Indian, and in 1977 she helped coordinate the first conference on Indians in the Americas by the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 2007, Young was a contributing author of the precursor document that later became the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. This declaration was later accepted by the General Assembly. [5]
Young was a tribal council member at Standing Rock from 2012 to 2015, and she is currently an organizer for the Lakota People’s Law Project, a nonprofit law firm led by Attorney Daniel Sheehan providing legal defense to water protectors in the aftermath of the Standing Rock DAPL struggle.
In 2018, Young became one of six people to be selected for the 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Solve Fellowship[6] with the Oceti Sakowin. As a Fellow, she was granted $10,000 in funding to put toward her efforts to bring renewable energy to the Standing Rock Reservation.
References
[edit]- ^ "At Standing Rock, a Fight for Basic Survival - Indian Country Media Network". Archived from the original on 2018-04-27. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
- ^ "Standing Rock Sioux Elder: "We Have an Obligation to Protect All of America"". www.truth-out.org. Archived from the original on 2016-11-18.
- ^ "At Standing Rock, a Fight for Basic Survival - Indian Country Media Network". Archived from the original on 2018-04-27. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
- ^ Josephy, Alvin M.; Nagel, Joane; Johnson, Troy R. (1999). Red Power: The American Indians' Fight for Freedom. U of Nebraska Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-8032-7611-6.
- ^ "Phyllis Young, Tribal Water Activist - An Office of the Administration for Children & Families". 8 August 2022. Retrieved 2023-04-18.
- ^ "MIT Solve | Inaugural Oceti Sakowin Fellows". 25 April 2018.
- 21st-century Native Americans
- 20th-century Native Americans
- Native American activists
- Members of the American Indian Movement
- Women Native American leaders
- Native American history of South Dakota
- Native American history of North Dakota
- American environmentalists
- American women environmentalists
- Standing Rock Sioux people
- Living people
- 20th-century Native American women
- 21st-century Native American women
- 21st-century American women
- American women civil rights activists
- Native American people from North Dakota
- Native American people from South Dakota