Credit: Julie GarnerNeil Young is well-known for embracing a variety of environmental causes, and the folk-rock legend has shown his support for another one in a brand-new protest song called “Indian Givers” that premiered recently on his official YouTube channel. According to RollingStone.com, the folk-rock legend’s tune rails against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is being built to carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois through land that many Native Americans consider sacred.
As the magazine reports, residents of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and members of the ReZpect Our Water organization staged demonstrations against the project’s expansion this summer, which resulted in many arrests as well as physical clashes between protesters and security personnel hired to guard the pipeline.
The video features clips of Young driving in a car lip-synching the song, as well as footage and photos of the pipeline site, protesters and police officers.
“Indian Givers” begins with the lyrics, “There’s a battle raging on the sacred land/ Our brothers and sisters have to take a stand/ Against us now for what we all been doing/ On the sacred land there’s a battle brewing.”
After that verse, Young sings a repeated chorus, “I wish somebody would share the news,” then follows with a verse that introduces the song’s title and apparently references the the U.S. government’s history of not honoring its treaties with Native Americans: “Now it’s been about 500 years/ We keep taking what we gave away/ Just like what we call Indian givers/ It makes you sick and gives you shivers.”
In 2014, Young similarly got involved in a protest against the extension of the Keystone XL pipeline, which runs from western Canada to the Gulf of Mexico through farms and indigenous tribal lands in the Midwestern U.S.
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