Standing rock and the Indigenous commons
ABSTRACT A new cycle of communications commons has become part of the contemporary repertoire of Indigenous first nations in North America. The mobilization of the Standing Rock Sioux is perhaps the best known example of a continent wide cycle of resistance in which Indigenous communities have employed a combination of collectively governed land based encampments and sophisticated trans media assemblages to challenge the further enclosure of their territories by the state and fossil fuel industries and instead represent their political and media sovereignty, and prefigure a more reciprocal relationship with other humans and with nature. Although their practices of commoning resemble other radical commons projects, the contemporary Indigenous commons begs for a reassessment of the critical framework of the commons. In this article, I discuss the critical commons literature and compare it with the practices of commoning in the anti extractivist encampments of Standing Rock.