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Melissa Anderson won HERO of the Week.
"Cool beans!"
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the
Read about Milton Severe '89, director of exhibition design at Falcouner. page 7
Scarlet & Black Volume 133, Issue 23
Gina Clayton awarded the Grinnell Prize
CONTRIBUTED
By Alice Herman hermanal17@grinnell.edu This week, the College awarded Gina Clayton, founder of Essie Justice Group and longtime civil and human rights activist, the $100,000 Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize (Grinnell Prize). The Prize honors “social innovators” who approach issues of social justice from angles that have been less explored by well-funded and established nongovernmental organizations and nonprofits. The Grinnell Prize was created in 2011 to fund the work of social justice activists and to then incorporate the recipients of the award into the Grinnell College community. Susan Sanning, Assistant Dean and Director of Service and Social Innovation, worked with a committee comprised of faculty, alumni, trustees and students to nominate and eventually identify the recipient of the award. According to Sanning, the award was created, “to honor people who were doing really innovative work soon after their bachelor’s.” The $100,000 prize is special in part, Sanning >> See Clayton awarded, page 2
Standing Rock activists open Little Creek camp in Iowa to fight Dakota Access Pipeline
By Jon Sundby sundbyjo17@grinnell.edu
Many of the activists who have started a camp at Little Creek, a new community of water protectors in Jackson County, Iowa, have stories about Standing Rock. Smudge Bear, one of these activists, traced his flashlight across the cloudy sky above the Little Creek encampment. “I remember back at Standing Rock, we used to do this in search of planes.” “Everyone here has faced rubber bullets, has faced tear gas, we were all on the front lines,” said J.B., one of the founders of the camp. Started in early March, the camp at Little Creek has collected several activists who were displaced once the encampments at Standing Rock were razed by the National Guard. Their new goal is to both fight the DAPL pipeline from here in Iowa, as well as to establish a community which is environmentally sustainable and indigenous-led. The camp’s members originally hail from all around the nation, many of them coming from Native American reservations. Several of the people at Little Creek expressed how inspired they were that Standing Rock was able to facilitate a pan-Native movement, something which they hadn’t seen before in their lifetimes. In this spirit, the founders of Little Creek organized their camp around some traditions common to several tribes, such as a sweat lodge and sacred fire. Activists with indigenous roots are encouraged to take part in the established camp rituals, and then share their own traditions with the group. But beyond just a cultural exchange, many of the people at Little Creek have the specific goal of
KOSUKE YO
A group of students visited the camp at Little Creek last Friday to talk with the activists at the indigenous-led camp. keeping the energy of the movement alive. There have been several of these camps established across the nation since the dissipation of Standing Rock, and a few of the activists have already travelled around and lived in some of them. They recognize the challenge of trying to bring together a movement that is geographically fractured, but hope that that their presence and the constant transfer of knowledge amongst the camps will help them rebuild the movement. “I’m usually up at a camp in South Dakota, but was asked to come down here to coordinate with this camp,” said a visiting member who chose to remain anonymous. “Really, it’s like little city-states everywhere, but they’re all trying to do the same thing …[but] all the camps have their different advantages and ways of doing things.” With pseudonyms like “The
Piece of Grinnell history unearthed after 103 years underground
SOFI A MENDEZ
The "Peace Rock" was brought out of the ground this week, thanks to Professor John Whittaker, anthropology and his Archeological Field Methods class. By Jon Sundby sundbyjo17@grinnell.edu On April 25, 1914, a gang of students reportedly snuck out into the dead of night to finally finish the job they had been trying in vain to accomplish — to rid campus of the “Peace Rock.” Angered over the suspension of the campus “scrap,” these students wanted to eliminate the symbol of the tradition’s destruction, and on that night they laid the rock to rest in a hole on the campus’s southwest lawn. And there the rock rested for 103 years. However, after its long absence, the Peace Rock has finally Sunday 20th Year Celebration of Black Church at Grinnell Herrick Chapel, 10 a.m.
thesandb.com
April 28, 2017 • Grinnell, Iowa
been brought back up. On Tuesday, which was the anniversary of the burial of the rock, John Whittaker, anthropology, and local historian Byron Hueftle-Worley presided over a brief ceremony to welcome the rock back to the surface. “I want to thank all the many people who made this possible, and it’s mainly Byron’s fault,” quipped Whittaker. “He did all the research and got me interested.” Whittaker went on to thank the McGough construction company, the administration, his fellow faculty members and of course, the students who helped him unearth the historical rock. During the three-
week dig, students from Whittaker’s Archeology Methods class, as well as some interested passersby, formed Whittaker’s excavation team. While the archaeological process does take longer than a backyard dig, Whittaker expressed how impressed he was with the original team of students who buried the large boulder. “I want to have some students get their hands on the rock and see how many of them it takes to move the thing,” Whittaker said. Although the Peace Rock is now out of the ground and rests on the sidewalk near its burial site,
Friday Writers@Grinnell: Bennet Sims
Tuesday Horizontal and Hysterical or The University Is Killing Me JRC 209, 12 p.m.
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>> See Peace Rock, page 2
Planter,” and “Smudge Bear,” many of the activists chose to stay anonymous, to both counteract government surveillance as well as to represent the new identities that they have developed within the movement. Vanessa Dundon, known at Little Creek as “Suzy,” says that she and many of her fellow activists found purpose at Standing
"Everyone here has faced rubber bullets, has faced tear gas, we were all on the front lines." J.B., founder of Little Creek camp Rock, and that the experience has changed their outlook, disposition and direction. “We weren’t perfect going in. Many of us have histories, but that’s why we were so good on the
frontlines. I don’t know how long a sheltered person would have lasted out there,” Dundon said. “These experiences gave us strength.” For Dundon, this strength was both metaphorical and physical. Earlier this year she was hit in the right eye by a tear-gas canister while out on the front lines. By her telling, it was only through a string of good luck that she was able to see a physician in time to save it. But even then, she still has only 10 percent of her vision on that side. “She truly has sacrificed herself for the cause,” J.B. commented. Influenced by the mission and energy of the camp, several Grinnell students have started a campus organization called the “Little Creek Movement” as a way to bring the water protectors’ positive message of activism and social change to their peers. The group >> See Students start, page 2
Fighting overpopulatiuon with reproductive rights
By Carter Howe howecart@grinnell.edu
Population expert John Seager delivered a talk on Monday about the importance of access to family planning in the fight against overpopulation and the challenges presently facing family planning efforts. Seager is the founder of Population Connection, a “national grassroots population organization” that seeks to educate the public about the threat of overpopulation and ensure greater access to family planning resources, particularly for women in the developing world. Seager has previously worked in Congress and at the Environmental Protection Agency. Seager began his talk by explaining the causes of recent massive population growth and the threat posed by overpopulation. The dramatic decline in child mortality in the developed world that started in the early 1800s is the reason why population has grown so much in
recent history, he said. According to the UN, global population is expected to growth to about 11 billion people by 2100, which could put a strain on natural resources, exacerbate climate change and lead to greater famine and war if not dealt with properly. “The way to make population challenges evaporate is by focusing on reproductive autonomy, on removing the barriers that prevent women and girls and couples from achieving their own chosen reproductive destiny,” Seager said. He then criticized the Trump administration for cutting off US funding to UN family planning programs as well as reinstating what is known as the “global gag rule” or “Mexico City policy,” which prevents clinics abroad from receiving US funds if they perform abortions or refer patients to other clinics to receive them. “A lot of programs around >> See Family planning page 2
HELENA GRUENSTEIDL
Population expert John Seager gave a talk on Monday about the importance of family planning in the fight against overpopulation. Tuesday From Mumbai to Grinnell to NASA HQ-Adventures in Time and Space ARH 302, 7 p.m.
Thursday The Psychological Lives of the Poor ARH 102, 4 p.m.
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