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![Native Americans have claimed their rights and their place in the U.S. through more than two centuries of activism, according to Frederick Hoxie, recently retired as a professor of history, law and American Indian studies at Illinois.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2019-05/98794.jpg?itok=BSU7l7ml)
For months, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its allies have protested the routing of an oil pipeline near its reservation in North Dakota – and recently won a temporary victory when federal officials put a hold on the pipeline’s completion. But the protest itself has been a significant event in the 200-year history of American Indian activism, says Frederick E. Hoxie, who told that history in the book “This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made.” Recently retired as a University of Illinois professor of history, law and American Indian studies, he spoke with the Illinois News Bureau about the protest and what it means.