Native American communities have been speaking out effectively on important environmental issues and modeling powerful activism on the day’s key issues.

I remember Ely’s Bob Cary’s entertaining talk at Vermilion Community College years ago about the Anishinabe view of and respect for the natural world. Jackpine Bob learned to speak the Ojibwe language and celebrated the outdoors by canoeing, camping, fishing and writing about the northwoods until his death in 2006.

Speaking of the environment, Bob told his Ely audience, “I don’t know even if setting aside little pieces here and there is going to do it,” he said, “ because if we don’t take care of the whole thing, some of that may vanish along with it. I don’t know what we are doing to this ecology.”

Bob paid respect to the Native people who were his friends in many public conversations about changes coming to the north country. He told one story of a tour for VIPs at a Virginia open pit mine when an Indian elder was asked what he thought of the huge machinery and the massive mining operation. The man answered, “I remember when I was a little boy, when the white man killed the game. And I remember when he cut down all the trees. And now he’s hauling away the rock.”

Today, the Idle No More movement is a prime example of how Native people are standing up to protect the environment. The grassroots mobilization sparked in 2012 by Canadian Native North Americans has taken on civil rights and resource extraction protests. The impetus was the law called C-45, which Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Parliament passed to weaken environmental protections and indigenous people’s sovereignty over decisions about the removal of Canadian tar sands. Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a protest involving the blockage of railways and highways and her six-week hunger strike that brought international attention to the issue.

In Minnesota, Native groups have spoken against wolf hunting, and all seven of the state’s Ojibwe bands prohibited it on tribal lands. Others are very concerned about the potential damage to wild rice if standards governing sulfate levels are loosened because of mining interests.

In a particularly unusual demonstration last week, “Cowboys and Indians” gathered in Washington D.C. to demand that President Obama reject the Keystone XL pipeline project. In observance of Earth Day the coalition called the Cowboy Indian Alliance brought Nebraska ranchers and members of the Piscataway tribe to a five-day gathering involving Great Plains tribes in protest of the Transcanada project. If approved the pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Kansas. Those who oppose the pipeline assert that the tar sands industry is more carbon-intensive than regular oil extraction and they fear pipeline spills, which are more frequent than when oil is moved by trucks and rail.

The pipeline would be built across land the Lakota people were promised in the Laramie Treaty of 1868, territory which was later retaken by the United States government, but is still claimed by the Lakota. Ranchers and farmers in the area feel a similar attachment to the land today.

The ranchers’ gifts of food, tobacco and cloth, the tipis on the National Mall, the ceremonial beads and feathers, the cowboy gear of bandanas and Stetsons—and riders of both traditions on horseback seemed to signal a coalition after centuries of conflict between settlers and the Great Plains tribes. While centuries of conflicted history are not forgotten, the alliance may be a sign of shared environmental interests and reconciliation to come.

Another sign of such reconciliation occurred as the City of Minneapolis last week created an Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday of October that, significantly, happens to be when the country celebrates Columbus Day.

In proper resolution-speak, the document begins, “Whereas, the City of Minneapolis recognizes the annexation of Dakota homelands for the building of our city, and knows Indigenous nations have lived upon this land since time immemorial and values the progress our society has accomplished through American Indian technology, thought, and culture…”

And while it doesn’t bash Christopher Columbus for the devastation he and European immigrants loosed on Native tribes, or note that he didn’t “discover” a country already inhabited, it does mention the current national holiday and the history of attempts to change it.

“In 1990 representatives from 120 Indigenous nations at the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance unanimously passed a resolution to transform Columbus Day into an occasion to strengthen the process of continental unity and struggle towards liberation, and thereby use the occasion to reveal a more accurate historical record.”

It emphasizes that “Indigenous Peoples Day shall be used to reflect upon the ongoing struggles of Indigenous people on this land and to celebrate the thriving culture and value that Dakota, Ojibwe, and other Indigenous nations add to our city.”

I would add to that, our recognition of the significant leadership that Native people and communities are taking in their work to protect the environment for all of us.