The First Amendment guarantees us a short list of rights, one which is of course freedom of speech. But we often to forget that our freedom to assemble is just as important, although much less publicized when attacked.
Jenni Monet, an independent journalist and Indigenous woman, has experienced this first-hand as an active participant in the 2016 Standing Rock protests, where she was wrongfully arrested, detained and charged while documenting the movement.
“I was disappointed at the inequality that exists for another freedom of expression protected under the first amendment: the right to free assembly,” Monet said. “For the hundreds of water protectors arrested for standing up to defend their right to clean drinking water and for many others, their treaty rights, it’s clear that there is an uneven justice on a constitutional right that belongs to all Americans.”
Monet comes from the Southwestern landscape of Albuquerque, New Mexico and is a tribal member to the Laguna Pueblo. Being raised on the reservation watching late-night television news with her grandfather as a child helped encourage her passion to become a journalist. She expressed a real interest throughout her life and stated that she knew she would be “documenting life in some way, shape or form.”
Fast forward to her current work, Monet is most notable for her documentation of and contribution to the Standing Rock Protests in 2016. After the first teepee was erected in April of that year, Monet came in later that September just when the protests were attracting more attention.
When asked what prompted her to join the #NoDAPL Movement, she said she was not new to these issues; as an Indigenous woman herself, Monet is a living witness to the constant, systematic mistreatment of Native peoples in the United States.
Through first-hand accounts and rigorous examination of Indigenous human rights policy, Monet developed a keen eye to understanding relationships between multinational corporations, the U.S. government and tribal/Indigenous peoples. Standing Rock was a prime example of this. With a militarized state enacting violence on a community, who were exercising their first amendment right to assemble, Monet felt that this was “some other force protecting the pipeline against one of the most marginalized communities,” and that’s why she stayed.
Monet continued to work on site for six months up until Feb. 1, 2017 when she was wrongfully arrested and detained for 30 hours on false charges of criminal trespassing and engaging in a riot. That day, local police swept through tented protests and as they approached media outlets for press passes, Monet quickly showed hers while maintaining a safe distance from the raids, following their every order (all of this was on record, confirming that she was compliant and did not break any laws). Police continued to harass her as she was leaving the scene. Eventually they forcibly arrested her and booked her into Morton County jail.
Once she was bailed out, Monet wrote about her experience and continued to fight for Indigenous rights regarding her own case and her right to speak up and Standing Rock’s freedom to assemble (she was acquitted of all charges in June). Monet said she “hope[s] that the lasting impact of Standing Rock is something that keeps that spotlight on Indigenous issues alive. That’s the big takeaway of Standing Rock; that’s a success story. That people finally paid attention, like no longer were ‘treaties’ some kind of foreign concept, it was actually being recited on mainstream commercial news. And I don’t think that anybody can forget that.”
Monet said she feels that it’s her responsibility as a journalist, advocate and member of the Indigenous community to “keep the momentum going.” Her case has also highlighted the stratification of rights like the freedom of press over assembly, when in fact the First Amendment is accessible to everyone, and not exclusively journalists over Indigenous peoples.
“I feel like the First Amendment is for all Americans, and I think that through my case on press freedom, it highlighted this disparity of actual freedom of assembly that should also be as promoted to defend to all the water protectors, the hundreds of water protectors who were there,” she said. “This [Standing Rock] is a freedom of assembly issue just as much as mine was a freedom of the press. I didn’t realize that until I was sitting in court, how parallel they are and how differently they are being treated in this realm… If we are to look at the First Amendment, it doesn’t just belong to journalists, it belongs to every American. And they have a right to speak up and to assemble and to gather and to say whatever they want with regard to how they want to do it.”
This exact sentiment reveals Monet’s role as a journalist and extends to her human rights advocacy. Even now as she continues to work on these issues and is actively participating in the larger narrative surrounding the rights of marginalized people on a global scale, we can count on her subjectivity as a social justice warrior.