Standing Rock is a modern-day Indian war. This time Indians are winning | Martin Lukacs

A historic growing movement for Indigenous rights is a key to protecting land and water and preventing climate chaos

As Indigenous peoples faced off against armed police and tanks near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in Dakota, theirs wasn't just a battle over a pipeline. It was a battle over a story that could define the future of America.

The Obama administration's decision yesterday to refuse the Dakota Access pipeline permission to complete its construction has now shaken up that story. Its old version was that Indigenous peoples have always been in the way of progress, their interests a nuisance or threat, their treaties a discardable artifact. In that story, the American heroes forged on these high plains of the west were never the Indians: they were the gold-diggers or gamblers, the cowboys or cavalry.