Indigenous filmmaker’s ‘every breath’ a fight for his people

By SAM METZ
AP / Report for America

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — An Indigenous filmmaker who helped draw worldwide attention to the concerns of Native Americans fighting an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation has died. Myron Dewey was a citizen of the Walker River Paiute Tribe. He passed away Sunday after his car crashed in rural Nevada. The 49-year-old won acclaim for his footage of the 2016 demonstrations over the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border. His visuals of Native Americans being sprayed with water cannons in freezing weather were widely viewed. Dewey’s work on the protests was part of a long career of chronicling Indigenous and environmental issues.