The camera is focused on 13-year-old Tokata Iron Eyes. The sun is bouncing off her cheek as her eyes beam and she tells the audience, “I feel like I got my future back.” As if on cue, she begins to cry.
There were, of course, no cues from a director—no producer who plucked this young Native American from a pile of headshots. It’s unscripted and it aired in real time, with almost 2 million views on fb o date. The clip is of Iron Eyes celebrating a since-overturned decision by the Army Corps of Engineers not to grant an easement to allow construction of the 1,172-mile-long Dakota Access Pipeline, designed to carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. The video captures the youth of the anti-pipeline movement, a group that helped propel its messaging across the U.S. and beyond using some of the simplest (and cheapest) of marketing tools: social media.
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