Abstract

A variety of images were created in solidarity with the #NoDAPL, a movement of nonviolent direct actions instigated in 2016 by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). This thesis argues that the imagery created in solidarity with the #NoDAPL movement helped water protectors and their allies create a “future imaginary,” a concept theorized by the digital media theorist Jason Edward Lewis (Kānaka Maoli, Samoan). Employing the concept of the future imaginary as a theoretical framework, this thesis examines various materials designed by Indigenous artists in 2016 in solidarity with the #NoDAPL movement, including the anti-extraction graphic No Pipelines on Indigenous Land by Dylan Miner (Métis), the banner design Thunderbird Woman by Isaac Murdoch (Ojibwe), the banner design Thunderbird Woman’s Mom (Water is Life) by Christi Belcourt (Métis), and the Mirror Shield Project by Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota). Divided into three sections, this thesis defines the future imaginary and draws its connection to the organizing that took place at Standing Rock, analyzes some of the iconography shared throughout the imagery created in solidarity with the #NoDAPL movement—focusing specifically on prophecies and the figures of Zuzeca Sape, or the Black Snake, and the Thunderbird—and considers the modes of production and the means of dissemination employed by artists both within and outside the Standing Rock camps.