The hip-hop artist Taboo, a solo artist and former member of the Black-eyed Peas, and the actress Shailene Woodley headlined this 2016 music video, “Stand Up/Stand N Rock” to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in 2016. The Dakota Access Pipeline is a nearly twelve-hundred-mile pipeline that now runs from shale oil fields in northwestern North Dakota to an oil terminal in Illinois. The section of the pipeline that would cross under Lake Oahe, an important source of water for the Standing Rock Sioux became the subject of major environmental and Indigenous rights protests in the summer and fall of 2016. In 2017, Stand Up/Stand N Rock won a MTV Video Music Award in the category of “Best fight against the system.”
Watch the video or read the lyrics. How does ”Stand Up/Stand N Rock” weave together ideas about gender, history, environment, and cultural identity in opposition to the pipeline?
How does the video use imagery to make the case for clean water and Indigenous sovereignty?
Citation:
“Stand Up / Stand N Rock #NoDAPL (Official Video).” YouTube video, 5:13. Posted by “Taboo,” December 4, 2016. https://youtu.be/Onyk7guvHK8.
Library Item Date:
2016