Cassandra Perez talks about her experiences as a deaf Native American and what coming to Standing Rock means to her. Lance McKinley joins in to talk about why he came to Standing Rock.
Cassandra is attempting to gather “the Deafatives” (combination of Deaf people and Natives). If you know a deaf person, or are one yourself, there is a place for you at Standing Rock at Deaf Camp in the Oceti Sakowin Camp.
They are accompanied by their interpreters, who asked that their names not be used because, the said, “The story is not about them.”
The full Deaf Camp story, as a part of the Standing Rock Stories series, includes six videos in separate posts.
***About this project: So Our Kids Know: Standing Rock Stories***
There is a need to raise awareness about what is happening at Standing Rock in a positive way.
The thought is that a good way to do that might be to do short interviews with as many people as possible so that they can talk about why they are here and what this movement means to them—in their own words.
The videos you see will be raw, unedited, and recorded on my phone (until further notice).
The videos include external noises like the voices of children and adults and other camp sounds like chainsaws, loud vehicles, wind, and fly overs from surveillance aircraft. And sometimes my voice sounds really dorky because I talk too close to the microphone and/or I just sound like a dork.
If you would like to see and hear better video and audio footage, I do not have the resources to get cameras, microphones, editing software and hardware, or a fancy website—and I have yet to meet anyone with those resources who is interested in doing this. So, please feel free to help in whatever way is in your heart to help if you feel called to do so.
These are the stories we should be covering; the real life people, here on the ground at Standing Rock, talking about, in their own words, why they are here and what this means to them.
So Our Kids Know 