Last week, a del­e­ga­tion of Indige­nous women returned from a trip to Europe where they met with lead­ers of finan­cial insti­tu­tions in Nor­way, Switzer­land, and Ger­many, the ​“home bases for sev­er­al of the world’s largest finan­cial and insur­ance insti­tu­tions sup­port­ing dan­ger­ous extrac­tion devel­op­ments,” accord­ing to the news release. The del­e­ga­tion was orga­nized by Indige­nous women lead­ers in part­ner­ship with the Women’s Earth and Cli­mate Action Network.

Now, the move­ment that began at Stand­ing Rock has gone glob­al, since much of the DAPL fund­ing came from over­seas banks. Some Euro­pean banks such as BNP Paribas have tak­en steps to stop fund­ing fos­sil fuel projects that tram­ple Native peo­ples’ rights. Oth­ers such as Norway’s DNB and ING have done some divesting.

Seat­tle was the first, then more cities fol­lowed, and the move­ment to defund Big Oil is still grow­ing. In May, Indige­nous lead­ers launched a new cam­paign, the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expan­sion, tar­get­ing four pro­posed tar sands pipelines. The strat­e­gy is to stop banks’ finan­cial com­mit­ment before ground is bro­ken. One of these projects — TransCanada’s Ener­gy East Pipeline — was ter­mi­nat­ed ear­li­er this month.

Last Decem­ber, calls to defund the Dako­ta Access pipeline and ​“Stand with Stand­ing Rock” led indi­vid­u­als to divest mil­lions of dol­lars from banks extend­ing cred­it to that project. As cities and tribes got involved, that amount increased to now more than $4 billion.

Jack­ie Field­er, who is Mni­cou­jou Lako­ta and Man­dan-Hidat­sa, was a mem­ber of that women’s del­e­ga­tion. Field­er is an enrolled mem­ber of the Three Affil­i­at­ed Tribes and a cam­paign coor­di­na­tor of Lako­ta People’s Law Project as well as an orga­niz­er with Maza­s­ka Talks. Oth­ers in the del­e­ga­tion includ­ed LaDon­na Brave Bull Allard, Michelle Cook, and Tara Houska.

In this inter­view, Field­er talks about divest­ment, the delegation’s trip to Europe, and what’s next for the move­ment to defund fos­sil fuel projects that threat­en Indige­nous peo­ples. The inter­view has been light­ly edit­ed for clar­i­ty and length.

Shan­nan Stoll: One thing con­nect­ing the del­e­ga­tion of women that went to Europe was that you were all involved in the Stand­ing Rock move­ment. Could you tell me about your involve­ment with Stand­ing Rock and the divest­ment movement?

Jack­ie Field­er: I have a con­nec­tion to the Dako­ta Access pipeline specif­i­cal­ly because Mni­cou­jou is a band with­in the Cheyenne Riv­er [Sioux] Tribe, and Cheyenne Riv­er is, along­side Stand­ing Rock, suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers over the ille­gal approval of the Dako­ta Access pipeline.

I got involved because I am the result of what hap­pens when you pro­tect water — my grand­par­ents grew up along the Mis­souri Riv­er — and I have had a pas­sion for fol­low­ing the mon­ey when it comes to injus­tices like these.

At the end of DAPL, I was try­ing to find a way to get involved or sup­port the move­ment from afar. I was in San Fran­cis­co at the time of the camp and was real­ly com­mit­ted to my work in the Bay Area and didn’t want to tear away from it.

In late Jan­u­ary, I saw Seat­tle com­mit to mov­ing its mon­ey away from Wells Far­go. This was a result of Indige­nous-led ground actions and a four-month-long pres­sure cam­paign led by Matt Rem­le and Rachel Heaton, who are the co-founders of Maza­s­ka Talks. I was inspired by [their] work, and I said ​“this has to hap­pen in San Fran­cis­co.” Over the course of a month I start­ed a cam­paign and made a Face­book page called San Fran­cis­co Defund DAPL Coali­tion. … We want­ed to put San Francisco’s mon­ey where their sol­i­dar­i­ty was. … We got a res­o­lu­tion on the table [of the city coun­cil], and it passed unan­i­mous­ly.

How has the divest­ment move­ment grown since Stand­ing Rock? Is divest­ment working?

Yes. Since Stand­ing Rock, more than a dozen cities have tak­en some form of action to move their mon­ey out of Wall Street. These include Los Ange­les, San Fran­cis­co, Seat­tle, Eugene, Mis­soula, San­ta Fe, Den­ver, Col­orado Springs, Min­neapo­lis, Chica­go, D.C., Char­lotte, and others.

We know divest­ment is work­ing because Ener­gy Trans­fer sued our part­ner Green­peace, and oth­er part­ners, … and their SLAPP [strate­gic law­suit against pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion] suit includ­ed a quote that says:

The dam­age to our rela­tion­ships with the cap­i­tal mar­kets has been sub­stan­tial, impair­ing access to financ­ing and increas­ing their cost of cap­i­tal and abil­i­ty to fund future projects.

So it’s work­ing to the extent that they’re hav­ing a tough time with cap­i­tal mar­kets and hav­ing a tough time fund­ing future projects. And that’s exact­ly what we want.

What was the pur­pose of this trip?

The pur­pose was to demand Euro­pean banks divest from fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies that vio­late Indige­nous peo­ples’ right to Free, Pri­or, and Informed Con­sent, as out­lined in the Unit­ed Nations dec­la­ra­tion of the rights of Indige­nous peoples.

We met with [major banks] and asked them to exclude Ener­gy Trans­fer, Enbridge, Kinder Mor­gan, and oth­er fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies that have vio­lat­ed Indige­nous peo­ples’ rights to deny or grant per­mis­sion for projects on their ter­ri­to­ries and that fund tar sands pipeline expansion.

Why was it impor­tant that women in par­tic­u­lar car­ry this mes­sage to Europe?

I think because Unci Maka, Grand­moth­er Earth, is fem­i­nine. Indige­nous women have been the back­bone of this par­tic­u­lar resis­tance move­ment, but also in gen­er­al, of tiospaye, fam­i­ly units, in Lako­ta nations. And Indige­nous women — as well as [being] tra­di­tion­al­ly the back­bone of their fam­i­lies, they often are the ones to call out injus­tice when they see it imme­di­ate­ly. We saw that at Stand­ing Rock. LaDon­na has a sto­ry in which she describes how there were bull­doz­ers going over the sacred bur­ial sites, and the men were just so in shock that they did­n’t know what to do. And LaDon­na said, ​“Well push [the men] out of the way and tell the women to stop it.” And that’s what hap­pened. Women got arrest­ed: doc­tors, moth­ers, sis­ters. They are a force to reck­on with. And I think that’s why we were meant to car­ry this par­tic­u­lar mes­sage to Europe.

The spe­cif­ic places you trav­eled were Nor­way, Switzer­land, and Ger­many. Why were those the targets?

These Euro­pean nations and their insti­tu­tions have some of the world’s high­est stan­dards for Indige­nous rights, cre­at­ing an open­ing for del­e­gates to call for firm action by banks and investors of these nations to uphold high stan­dards and become an inter­na­tion­al mod­el for jus­tice and accountability.

What did you learn from the trip?

We got to under­stand how Euro­pean, specif­i­cal­ly Nor­we­gian, Swiss, and Ger­man, peo­ple think about Indige­nous peo­ple, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, and their rela­tion­ships to banks. For exam­ple, Nor­way is laud­ed as the prime exam­ple of a green, pro­gres­sive coun­try. How­ev­er, there is a $1 tril­lion oil fund behind the eco­nom­ic and social equal­i­ty over there. And the Swiss bank, they man­age mon­ey from sketchy lead­ers. You know, they held Nazi mon­ey. They’re a real­ly good exam­ple of show­ing how neu­tral­i­ty in instances of injus­tice helps oppres­sors main­tain their hold on oppressed people.

With respect to Ger­many, there is a lot of poten­tial for peo­ple to hold their banks account­able. For exam­ple, Deutsche Bank is one of, if not the biggest, financers of the com­pa­nies behind the tar sands pipelines that we’re focused on. And they were real­ly inter­est­ed to hear what we had to say.

But they are — like many of the banks — real­ly hes­i­tant to do any­thing rad­i­cal, which in their world means step­ping away from fos­sil fuels. And that’s not what we’re ask­ing. BNP Paribas just set a stan­dard while we were there — right before Tara was going to meet with them — that they would stop financ­ing tar sands, Arc­tic drilling, and frack­ing. That sends a mes­sage to the rest of the banks that it is pos­si­ble to stop fund­ing destruc­tion and cli­mate change. This also fol­lows oth­er banks that pulled out of the Dako­ta Access pipeline funding.

I think that Europe is ready — because at this point the Unit­ed States is not going to do this with the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. Europe is ready to lead the world, if they want to, in a green path and one that upholds Indige­nous peo­ples’ rights and human rights.

What’s next for the divest­ment movement?

Our next move is to meet with insur­ers and cred­it rat­ing agen­cies in order to real­ly under­stand why a com­pa­ny like Enbridge has an ​“A” cred­it rat­ing. But Enbridge has one of the worst, if not the worst, records in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da for oil spills.

Accord­ing to LaDon­na, there are more than 200 camps around the world. We have fos­sil fuel and des­e­cra­tion projects around the world, and there are big financers behind these projects. The next thing for the divest­ment move­ment is to keep grow­ing. … We are going to con­tin­ue build­ing our alliances across the world and we’re going to bring this spe­cif­ic divest­ment move­ment that is Indige­nous led to a lev­el we haven’t seen since South African apartheid.

Maza­s­ka Talks has been orga­niz­ing a Divest the Globe cam­paign. What are you ask­ing peo­ple to do?

On Octo­ber 23 and 24 and 25, 92 banks that belong to the Equa­tor Prin­ci­ples Asso­ci­a­tion are meet­ing in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to dis­cuss Indige­nous peo­ples’ right to ​“free, pri­or, and informed con­sent.” Start­ing on Mon­day, we are call­ing for three days of action around the world that makes the con­nec­tion between banks and des­e­cra­tion projects, whether that’s the tar sands pipelines and the banks that finance those, a defor­esta­tion project, coal mines, or a local refin­ery. We want to raise the pub­lic’s aware­ness and to raise the banks’ aware­ness that we are well aware of who is financ­ing these projects, and —whether it’s a sit-in, vig­il, non­vi­o­lent direct action, art space, or teach-in — we want peo­ple to meet the com­mu­ni­ty where it’s at and edu­cate one anoth­er about the rela­tion­ship between these banks and these fos­sil fuel projects.

Why the focus on mak­ing the cam­paign global?

The financ­ing of fos­sil fuels over green pow­er is a glob­al issue. The events at Stand­ing Rock opened the world’s eyes to the sys­tem that we’re oper­at­ing under. Indige­nous peo­ples are the canaries in the coal mine. There are com­pa­nies that are will­ing­ly financ­ing the destruc­tion of our plan­et — not just Stand­ing Rock’s only source of water. This has always been much big­ger than just a sin­gle tribe or sin­gle people.

I am excit­ed to see peo­ple real­ize that this is going to hap­pen to every­one at some point. Whether that’s in a week, as is hap­pen­ing with these hur­ri­canes and fires and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, or whether it’s going to hap­pen to their grand­chil­dren who will have to live on a plan­et that is two degrees hot­ter and with fresh­wa­ter as scarce as it [will be]. I’m excit­ed to work with peo­ple on solu­tions that hon­or our role as stew­ards to the Earth and our duty to pro­vide a clean­er, less vio­lent, and cool­er plan­et to the next sev­en generations.

These banks are only mak­ing deci­sions on a quar­ter­ly basis. They’re not mak­ing their pro­jec­tions based on the next sev­en gen­er­a­tions. That’s why they’re hap­pi­ly financ­ing these projects that are so short-sight­ed and not even eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable.

Divest­ment is a way to obtain account­abil­i­ty and do it in a way that also invests in our future. When we take our mon­ey out of Wall Street, we put it into com­mu­ni­ty banks, into green banks, into cred­it unions that … fund growth in the community.

Divest­ment is not the only tac­tic that we, as Indige­nous peo­ple or just peo­ple who care about the plan­et, need to use. But it is cer­tain­ly going to be the engine behind the just tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuels to green energy.

(​”Why Native Amer­i­can Women Are Going After Europe’s Banks to Divest From Big Oil” was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Yes! Mag­a­zine and is repost­ed on Rur­al Amer­i­ca In These Times in accor­dance with their shar­ing pol­i­cy.)