In past years, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country six months ago, Olekseii Bezverkhnyii says, he didn’t spend much time pondering the meaning of Ukraine’s independence.

The middle school Ukrainian-language teacher and father of three in this southern city known for shipbuilding and sunflower fields took independence for granted, he says, “like something that just fell to us out of the sky.”

But Tuesday, as he slowly moves up in a long line of neighbors waiting to fill plastic jugs with potable water, and with this Independence Day just a sunrise away, Mr. Bezverkhnyii says the invasion and the ensuing martyrdom of his home city have changed everything.

“Independence is freedom. We feel it now. It’s something we won’t give up,” he says.

His wife and children have fled to safety in Germany. He’ll carry his water jugs back to a bomb-blasted home that hasn’t had reliable potable water since a Russian missile took out Mykolaiv’s main water conduit from the Dnieper River in March. Later, the army veteran with a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard and an affinity for the Boston Celtics will prepare for his wartime occupation as a volunteer in the civilian Territorial Defense Forces.

And this year, despite or perhaps because of all that, he’ll be thinking this: “Russia did this to us; Russia put independence in our hearts.”

Across Ukraine, average Ukrainians report a similar shift in their perception of Independence Day as the result of an invasion that aimed to take independence away. The war, with its displacement of millions of Ukrainians, the deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and the destruction of cities and villages, has turned Aug. 24 from a welcome day off to a call to action, if not arms.

“If you consider Ukrainian history, you will see that this fight we have for our independence is not new, but it is sharper this year because of the threat we face to our freedom,” says Una, a National Academy of Arts student in the western city of Lviv who requested that her last name be withheld. She spends the afternoon with a group of friends in a city park crafting small heating and cooking stoves for front-line soldiers to use once the weather turns cold this fall.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Una (right), a student at the National Academy of Arts in Lviv, joins other student volunteers making cooking and heating stoves for front-line soldiers, in Lviv, Ukraine, Aug. 19, 2022.

“Many of us feel now that our independence is not something we can rely on others to hand to us,” says Una, turning a pot of melted beeswax into which she’ll dip cardboard strips to make the pots’ high-heat fuel. “It is something we all have to take part in and protect together.”

Closer to Mykolaiv, in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, Mykola Shamin describes from his pickles stall in New Market how this year, Independence Day will be a day of thanksgiving.

“We won’t be able to see our grandchildren this year, which will be hard for us,” says Mr. Shamin, whose smaller grandchildren have left Odesa for a village in central Ukraine, while an older granddaughter is now in Moldova.

But as he cuts dill stems for his pickling brine, he smiles and offers a more hopeful note. “Right now, my wife is home preparing special food for this day,” he says, “so we will enjoy that and be thankful for the independence we gained 31 years ago” following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Part of us will be sad,” he adds, “but we will also be grateful for our president, for the military that is fighting for us so bravely, and for the countries around the world that are contributing to help us keep our freedom.”

In Washington, President Joe Biden marked the day by announcing Tuesday that the United States would provide an additional nearly $3 billion in security assistance.

Ukrainians have been on edge over what this national day might bring, especially since President Volodymyr Zelenskyy began warning earlier this week to expect “something particularly ugly” from Russia as it tried to make a statement about Ukrainian independence. Late in the day, Mr. Zelenskyy said a Russian missile had killed 22 people and wounded 50 at a train station in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the central part of the country.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Mykola Shamin tends his pickles stall in New Market, in Odesa, Ukraine, Aug. 22, 2022. He misses his grandchildren, who left Odesa for safer parts of Ukraine and Moldova, but expresses gratitude for Ukraine's independence and for its president, military, and the people around the world helping his country.

Everyone recalls that Russian President Vladimir Putin used a speech on the eve of the invasion he launched Feb. 24 to mock the notion of an independent Ukraine and to paint it instead as an indivisible part of the Russian motherland.

On Wednesday, at a small ceremony in Kyiv marking the day with his wife, President Zelenskyy tapped into the national sentiment by declaring Ukraine was “reborn” this year when Russia invaded.

Rejection of the notion of Ukraine as historically and culturally Russian seems especially visceral in Mykolaiv, perhaps in part because the city successfully repelled, at the cost of heavy losses, the Russian offensive aimed at capturing it early in the war. Now Russian forces sit on occupied territory just 20 miles east of the city, while rocket attacks over the summer have continued to kill civilians and damage infrastructure.

With more than half the prewar population of 500,000 having left – as recently as July the mayor responded to a fresh barrage of rocket attacks with a warning to “everyone who wants to stay alive to leave the city” – Mykolaiv is eerily quiet.

People worry about what might befall them overnight, and more long-term what a cold winter might bring. Some say they have heard Mr. Putin is counting on a cutoff of Russian gas – used to heat a shivering Europe – to soften international enthusiasm for Ukraine and bring it to its knees.

They mourn lost relatives and friends, miss terribly those who have left seeking refuge from war, and pray for sons on the front lines.

But they are also defiant.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Military press officer Dmytro Pletenchuk stands near the Mykolaiv Regional Administration building in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, Aug. 23, 2022. A Russian missile strike at the site killed 37 civilians in March.

“I don’t understand why the Russians attacked us; what did we do to deserve this?” asks Liudmila, who stands in the Mykolaiv water line with two large plastic jugs. Her eyes well up and she wipes away tears as she explains that her two sons are both on the front lines to the east, one having entrusted his wife and daughter to her care.

But then something in her eyes shifts at the mention of Independence Day, and replacing tears is a hint of maternal pride and resolve.

“I do not want my sons in this war, but they are doing the right thing,” she says. “They are protecting our homeland.”

Before the war, Mykolaiv was known as a place with considerable Russian sympathies, where Russian was the language of preference over Ukrainian. Once one of the Soviet Union’s major shipbuilding ports, the city maintained strong economic ties to Russia after Ukraine’s independence.

Russia’s siege of the city has abruptly changed that.

Russian place names are gone – Moscow Street is now Mariupol Street – Ukrainian is preferred, and an old notion of Russian brotherhood has vanished.

“For most of our independence we never had any problems with Russia. Mykolaiv was considered pro-Russian; many people here didn’t even think the war in Donbas from 2014 was their war,” says Dmytro Pletenchuk, press officer of the Mykolaiv military administration. “But Russia’s bombardment of our city every night really changed that.”

Walking through the city’s closed-down government center, Captain Pletenchuk turns to the destroyed Mykolaiv administration building, where dozens of civilians were killed in a March 29 missile strike.

“Is that something a brother would do to you?” he asks. “Even my 8-year-old daughter knows who our enemy is now,” he adds, “so in the future there will be no more pro-Russian Mykolaiv.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Professor Anastasia Khmel, dean of the faculty of political sciences at Black Sea National University, sits in the faculty's unscathed courtyard, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, Aug. 23, 2022.

For some, Ukraine’s independence, and in particular its separation from Russia, has been an evolution that accelerated with Moscow’s occupation of Crimea and the onset of the smoldering conflict in the Donbas in 2014.

What has happened this year, and what Anastasia Khmel says she will celebrate this Independence Day, is something different, “a change in mentality that has taken something that was on paper and made it a fact for Ukrainians.”

Dean of political sciences at Mykolaiv’s Black Sea National University, Professor Khmel says the war finally broke the hold over her city of the “Russian propaganda” that denied any idea of Ukrainian independence.

“What has happened is that this aggression has made independence something real, not just a thing to celebrate one day, but a path for moving towards the future instead of back to the past,” she says.

“This change has put independence in people’s hearts,” she says, adding, “That makes this year a point of no return.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

“Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. ... We appreciate you!”

Rosie Couture, shouting like a fangirl at the Connecticut Democrat as he walks by, is set up outside the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. It’s a hot summer afternoon, and she’s there with some 15 other teens for a “teach-in” on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) – a cause Sen. Richard Blumenthal supports. 

Propped up on the sidewalk, a hand-printed piece of cardboard bears the amendment’s core provision: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Next to it, a sheet is laid out on the sidewalk with the words “Defend Abortion = ERA Now.”  

Ms. Couture, a recent high school graduate from suburban Virginia, believes getting the 1970s-vintage ERA certified as part of the United States Constitution could provide the quickest path to reestablishing a constitutional right to abortion. And in the weeks since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, she and her peers have been on a mission to get it done. 

In the legal world, this take on the ERA’s potential to help secure abortion rights, at least anytime soon, is largely seen as a long shot. But these Generation Z activists are undeterred by the skepticism of their elders, whom they see as failing to meet the moment when it comes to reproductive rights – and so much more. Like many of their peers, they’re both convinced of the rightness of their cause and frustrated by what they see as the slower-moving political and organizational powers that be. And so they’re fighting in their own way, eschewing traditional groups to start new ones or simply taking action on their own. 

On many issues, from gun control to climate change, this generation has already demonstrated it can punch above its weight. In Parkland, Florida, survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School turned trauma into action by organizing March for Our Lives, now one of the top gun-safety advocacy groups. 

Young climate activists from the Sunrise Movement made headlines in 2019 when they staged a sit-in at the office of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Greta Thunberg of Sweden, still a teenager at 19, has been grabbing global attention since 2018 with her calls for climate action.

And on abortion, 19-year-old abortion-rights activist Olivia Julianna of Houston recently turned Twitter body-shaming, including the actions of a member of Congress, into fundraising gold. So far, she’s raised more than $2 million for the group Gen Z for Change to support abortion access. 

“I’m from Generation X, and I was taught to wait my turn,” says Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women since 2020. “Gen Z and millennials are pushing back on that. And that’s a wonderful thing.”

But even as young activists are praised for bringing fresh faces and ideas to their respective causes, they are criticized for putting idealism ahead of pragmatism. In the case of the Parkland activists, they’ve been accused of being pawns for adults. 

As the dust settles in the wake of Roe’s demise – and as big players like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood gear up for the battle ahead – young people like Ms. Couture seem likely to serve as both innovators and disrupters, bringing critical energy and people power, as well as some tensions, to the broader movement. 

“The younger generation, Gen-Z in particular, wants organizations to be what they want them to be at any point in time,” says Jennifer Lawless, a political scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Often, that means striking out on their own, finding “like-minded people through social media and other outlets,” she says. “It’s just a different way of doing politics.” 

Linda Feldmann/The Christian Science Monitor

Rosie Couture (left), co-founder of Generation Ratify, poses with Ritwik Tati, the group's co-national organizing director. Ms. Couture will be a freshman at Harvard University this fall. Mr. Tati is a rising sophomore at Stanford University.

Dawn of the post-Roe era

Ms. Couture learned about the ERA at age 14 and was shocked to discover that equal rights on the basis of sex weren’t already part of the Constitution. In 2019 she co-founded Generation Ratify, working to make Virginia the 38th and final state needed for ratification – a legislative effort that came to fruition in 2020. 

Now, at age 18, she slings the language of her cause like a seasoned Washington lobbyist. She was at the table in early June when the White House convened a meeting with youth leaders on reproductive justice and civil rights. This fall, she’ll be a freshman at Harvard. 

Conservative youth, too, are taking matters into their own hands – from protesting abortion in states where it’s still widely available, to fighting what they call “extreme gender ideology,” to suing over alleged speech discrimination on college campuses.

But at the dawn of the post-Roe era, the greater urgency is on the left, now driven by a mix of anger and hope. Adults under 30 are by far the most pro-abortion-rights age cohort in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center, with 74% saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 

Yet for Gen Zers – those born between 1997 and 2012 – this isn’t their mother’s or grandmother’s feminism. 

Older, liberal women, many of whom remember life before Roe, are more inclined to act by donating to the larger, established abortion-rights organizations and protesting at big rallies, say experts on feminism. 

Among Gen Z, the activism looks more atomized – lots of smaller groups doing their own thing, and exploiting the viral potential of social media, including TikTok and Instagram. 

To be sure, young people are involved in big national organizations, typically through college chapters. Amanda Matos of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund offers examples: student protests at the Florida capitol over legislation, since enacted, to ban abortion in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy; and efforts by Massachusetts students to ensure access to medication abortions via campus health centers.

In addition, Ms. Matos says, young people have been engaging in what she calls the “invisible work” of educating and mobilizing their communities around abortion access.

Young people “may or may not show up in a rally or march, but their work shows direct impact,” says Ms. Matos, senior director of the organization’s constituency campaigns.

“Intersectionality” – the intertwining of race, class, and gender identities – is often a key component. Gen Z is the most diverse age cohort in American history: Only a bare majority are non-Hispanic white, and 21% of those who have reached adulthood identify as LGBT, according to a 2021 Gallup poll. 

“That’s important, because lived experiences have an impact on how you show up in your activism,” says Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, or URGE, which she describes as an “intersectional reproductive justice organization” with a youth focus.

That emphasis on intersectionality has also generated controversy. Some progressives have replaced the phrase “pregnant women” with “pregnant people” to include those of all gender identities capable of becoming pregnant, including transgender men – a move that has sparked mockery from the right and which even some abortion-rights advocates say may alienate potential allies.

The linguistic debate doesn’t divide neatly along generational lines, but it’s one more example of how an internal disconnect can bog down the abortion-rights movement when it can least afford it. 

Still, it’s the tension between young reproductive-rights activists and old-school feminists that remains paramount. At an abortion-rights rally in Washington in mid-May, quickly organized after the draft decision overturning Roe leaked, the crowd of several thousand skewed older. Paradoxically, the women most directly affected by curtailed abortion rights – those in their prime childbearing years – were underrepresented. 

Professor Lawless, who studies the politics of gender, says she noticed back in January 2017, around the massive women’s march on the Washington Mall, that the younger generation seemed put off by the idea that there was an organizing entity.

Ask Ms. Couture of Generation Ratify about this, and the frustration pours out. 

“National women’s groups that are led by adults just tend to not effectively reach young people,” the 18-year-old says. “There’s some kind of lost-in-translation thing about how important young people are to their strategy.” 

Linda Feldmann/The Christian Science Monitor

Lawyer Kate Kelly conducts a teach-in on the Equal Rights Amendment for Generation Ratify on the sidewalk in front of Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., July 27, 2022.

Taking it to the White House

On a recent Saturday, a dozen members of Generation Ratify staged an “overnight action” in Lafayette Park across from the White House. They brought sleeping bags, snacks, and big light-up letters spelling “ERA now” to display along the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The gathering seems as much slumber party as direct action. Seated in a circle, participants introduce themselves, including preferred pronouns. The goal, Ms. Couture says, is to tell President Joe Biden that “we’re not going to sleep until he fights for equality.” 

Frustration with President Biden has been a running theme among abortion-rights activists – and not just younger ones – since Roe was overturned on June 24. Critics say his administration didn’t appear to have an action plan ready to go, even though a draft of the high court ruling had leaked nearly two months earlier. 

Administration officials push back on this characterization, pointing to the statement Mr. Biden made June 24, and his two subsequent executive orders aimed at protecting abortion rights – including the right to travel across state lines for the procedure and to access medication for self-induced abortions. 

But activists like Ms. Couture remain unsatisfied. On June 8, she and other youth leaders met with female officials from the president’s Office of Public Engagement and Gender Policy Council and from Vice President Kamala Harris’ office. Despite the high-level attendees, she still sounds dissatisfied. 

“I was like, where’s the Biden people? Are we just gonna pin this on the women?” Ms. Couture says. 

Her youthful idealism and impatience can come across as naive. But her persistence no doubt helps explain why Generation Ratify landed the White House meeting, as well as meetings with staff of some 30 House and Senate members, including aides to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. They’ve also talked to some lawmakers themselves. 

“One of our more interesting interactions was with [Arizona Democratic] Sen. Mark Kelly,” says Ritwik Tati, one of the group’s two national organizing directors and a rising sophomore at Stanford University. “He seemed surprised to hear that we have the required number of states to ratify the ERA.”

Mr. Tati is alluding to the Virginia legislature’s 2020 vote, meaning the ERA now has won support from three-quarters of U.S. states (38), the threshold needed to amend the Constitution. Supporters say Virginia’s ratification put the ERA just one signature away – that of the national archivist – from becoming the 28th Amendment.

Even if that signature were obtained, however, lawsuits would follow. The amendment’s original ratification deadline expired in the 1980s, and five states have since rescinded their ratifications. Court cases are pending. 

Moreover, even if the ERA were to be formally adopted, it’s not clear that it would offer a realistic path to restoring a constitutional right to abortion. Kate Kelly, a lawyer who advises Generation Ratify, argues in a recent op-ed that “with five dedicated antiabortion ‘originalists’ on the Supreme Court, the only thing we can do to protect abortion rights permanently is to change the constitutional text.”

But many legal scholars doubt that the courts, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, would regard a constitutional right to equality on the basis of sex as a legitimate underpinning for a guaranteed right to abortion. What’s more, passage of state laws and state constitutional amendments asserting that fetuses are people further complicates the effort. 

Some abortion-rights advocates not affiliated with Generation Ratify say the fight for the ERA is worth having anyway. “I agree that if the ERA is in the Constitution, there could be a future grounding for a new constitutional right to abortion,” says Leila Abolfazli, director of federal reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington. 

It’s just that that future may have to wait for a less conservative generation of judges, she adds.

In January, Mr. Biden called on Congress to pass a resolution recognizing ratification of the ERA. But his focus clearly lies elsewhere. On the day of Roe’s demise, he called on voters to elect supporters of abortion rights in the November midterm elections, and didn’t mention the ERA. Legislation that Democrats claim would codify Roe has passed the House but not the 50-50 Senate, where 60 votes are needed for passage.

For now, “we’re stuck with a state-by-state situation,” says David Garrow, a historian and expert on reproductive rights. For that reason, he says teen activists like those of Generation Ratify would have a much greater impact if they focused their efforts on “extrapolating from what happened in Kansas.” 

He’s referring to the surprisingly robust victory Aug. 2 by abortion-rights advocates in deep-red Kansas, where voters opted 59% to 41% not to amend the state constitution in a way that could have led to an abortion ban. Democrats hope it’s a sign that young people, notorious for not voting in midterms, will turn out nationwide in November. 

Linda Feldmann/The Christian Science Monitor

Bernadette Patel, Lauren Handy, and Hayden Laye (left to right), who oppose abortion, engage in counterprotesting while the Generation Ratify teach-in takes place outside the Hart building, July 27, 2022.

Engaging with all sides

Back at the Hart Senate Office Building, Ms. Couture of Generation Ratify notices three young people standing nearby holding anti-abortion signs, and her face lights up. 

“We have some counterprotesters, now would you look at that!” she says.

“This kid, we know him,” says Mr. Tati. “He’s a gay, pro-life Democrat.” 

His name is Hayden Laye, a teen from Walhalla, South Carolina, and he’s holding a rainbow-colored sign that says “LGBTQ+ rights start at conception.” The other two protesters are from the group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.

A middle-aged adult who’s there to support Generation Ratify wants nothing to do with the counterprotesters. But Ms. Couture engages with them in an animated discussion. They agree to disagree, and everyone is civil. If nothing else, it’s yet more evidence that young people aren’t apathetic – they just do things in their own way. 

Rui Vieira/AP

Manchester City's Rodrigo Hernández Cascante (right) challenges Newcastle's Allan Saint-Maximin during the English Premier League soccer match between Newcastle United and Manchester City on Aug.21, 2022. Both City and Newcastle are owned by Gulf kingdoms.

They call themselves the Toon Army, a fan fellowship whose passion is extraordinary even by the standards of English soccer’s Premier League. And last weekend, they were in full voice as they witnessed a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of their club, Newcastle United – thanks to players bought with hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi Arabian investment.

A hundred miles to the south, however, former Leeds University classmates of a woman named Salma al-Shehab had little reason to celebrate. She was sentenced last week to 34 years in a Saudi jail. Her “crime”? Expressing sympathy for dissidents and political activists on Twitter.

It’s a stark split-screen. And it sums up a challenge facing not just soccer but a growing range of sports, including boxing, Formula One racing, and, most recently, golf, with reports that the lavishly Saudi-funded new LIV tour is days away from prying more big names from the PGA.

The question facing the top teams, star athletes, and sports administrators is this: how to balance the allure of the eye-watering sums on offer from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s state investment fund against his regime’s serial abuses of human rights – most notoriously, the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Yet while on one level the challenge could hardly seem simpler – a choice between taking the money and taking a moral stand – world sport’s search for a response is proving more complex.

Saudi state television/AP

In this frame grab from Saudi state television footage, women's rights advocate Salma al-Shehab speaks to a journalist at the Riyadh International Book Fair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in March 2014. A Saudi court last week sentenced Ms. Shehab to 34 years in prison for expressing sympathy for dissidents and political activists on Twitter.

That’s largely – but not only – because they want the money.

Cash is inescapably at the core of the debate surrounding the increasingly ambitious series of sports investments being made by MBS, as the kingdom’s de facto ruler is known.

For Amnesty International and other human rights groups, the Saudi policy constitutes “sportswashing,” a transparent bid to burnish the country’s international reputation by buying its way into pastimes followed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Yet complicating the picture, and so far hobbling any moves toward a more assertive response, have been two political issues: the contradictory nature of MBS himself, an intolerant autocrat who’s also undertaken social reforms, and the wider prevalence of sportswashing.

Sportswashing is not new. Newcastle’s opponents in last Sunday’s thrilling 3-3 draw were the reigning kings of English soccer, Manchester City. They themselves have bolstered their dominance since the team was bought in 2008 by a fund owned by a member of the United Arab Emirates’ royal family.

The UAE has also been criticized by Amnesty for “serious human rights violations.” Indeed, Sunday’s game was dubbed by one British newspaper as “the greatest sportswashing derby the Premier League has yet known.”

What’s different, however, about Newcastle’s $355 million takeover last year was that it involved the Saudi state’s investment fund, headed by MBS himself.

Since taking power, MBS has ruled with an increasingly authoritarian hand. He has crushed dissent, moving first against royal rivals, then against others deemed a potential threat. Increasing surveillance of ordinary citizens has added a wider political chill.

The U.S. State Department’s latest annual report accuses his regime of a litany of rights violations, from “forced disappearances [and] torture” to “life-threatening prison conditions, arbitrary arrest,” and “harassment and intimidation” of dissidents overseas.

Seth Wenig/AP

Families and survivors of the 9/11 terror attacks attend a news conference near the site of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, New Jersey, July 29, 2022. The group of Sept. 11 victims' family members, who have long accused Saudi Arabia of aiding the terrorists who carried out the attacks, condemned former President Donald Trump for hosting the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour at his New Jersey course.

And yet he has also been a reformer. He has reined in the fundamentalist police that for years enforced a rigid code of behavior on Saudi society. He has expanded social and economic freedoms and opened the kingdom to foreign influences in movies, music, the arts. He has begun, especially, to loosen the shackles on Saudi women: giving them the right to drive, for instance, and easing their legal dependence on husbands or “male guardians.”

Women have also gained new opportunities to watch, and participate in, sports.

Those opposed to simply turning down the Saudis’ money argue that the kingdom is changing, and that sportswashing is an issue by no means limited to Saudi Arabia.

Yet last week’s sentencing of the former Leeds University dentistry student arrested while vacationing back home last year, has given fresh impetus to human rights groups’ contention that this argument is less a reason than an excuse for not taking a stronger stand.

Saudi women continue to face discrimination in marriage, divorce, and other family issues, they point out. Women political activists are still being harassed, detained, and jailed.

In an appeal last weekend for the British government to intervene in Ms. Shehab’s “shocking” case, Hilary Benn, a prominent Member of Parliament and former international development secretary, took issue with Saudi claims of reform.

“You can’t on the one hand say, ‘we are opening up and liberalizing,’” he added, “and on the other hand send a women to prison for expressing her opinions on Twitter.”

David Bezh Butler holds a shell bowl the size of a coconut in his palm, a fine line of smoke from burning herbs swirling into the air. One by one, he passes it among the 15 players of the Twin Cities Native Lacrosse team circled up on the Oxford Community Center field.

“This is for anyone who is bringing anything extra to the game,” says Mr. Butler, a self-described elder at the pickup match, as he leads the smudging ritual. “Whatever energy you bring to the game is what you get back.”

This ceremony, performed before each game, does more than set a mindful tone. It’s integral to what community lacrosse stands for here in the Twin Cities – home to one of the largest urban populations of American Indians in the country: healing and building community.

Unlike its modern, competitive counterpart – and its stereotypical “preppy, East Coast” image, according to players here – community lacrosse is not about who wins. Tribal teams participate in the competitive variety too, but here in the Twin Cities, the community game is about respect and having fun. The “Creator’s game,” as it is referred to within the community, can be played in celebration – to honor a family member’s college graduation – or in prayer for someone struggling with health issues.

Though lacrosse is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States among young people, many are unaware of the Native origins of the game. But there is a growing movement within Native communities in parts of the U.S. and Canada to remedy that, by reclaiming it and then educating a wider public about its origins. Gaining more agency over a sport that has been colonized and re-appropriated is one way that Native communities are reasserting their identities and building cultural resilience.

“I think the majority culture should be informed about the origins of the sport,” says Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe language and culture at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. “They should acknowledge [it] at collegiate events and use it as an opportunity to leverage attention to the history and the often marginalized Indigenous communities that shared it with the world.”

“At the same time, Native people should be encouraged and empowered to revitalize the Indigenous form of lacrosse and all of its cultural teachings and healing modalities.”

Colette Davidson

Community lacrosse is not about keeping score, but players still try to get the ball down to the end of the field and throw it at the goal post in a game on Aug. 7, 2022, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Physical and spiritual

The scarcity of data means that the origins of lacrosse are unclear, but the game is thought to date back to A.D. 1100, when it was played by the Haudenosaunee, an alliance of six nations from the Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora tribes, spanning Canada and the northeast region of North America that have historically (and somewhat derogatorily) been known as the Iroquois Confederacy.

While early accounts show that the game was played similarly to war – to settle disputes between communities or tribes – it was also played for enjoyment or as a medicine game.

“Lacrosse served multiple purposes. ... It has cultural and sacred dimensions,” says Mr. Treuer. “The healing happens on multiple levels. There are physical, emotional, and spiritual modalities.”

The traditional stickball game can take three basic forms – the Iroqouian, Great Lakes, and Southeastern – which differ in equipment and stick-handling techniques. The modern, competitive game most closely resembles the Iroquoian game, whose stick ended with a large, triangular net, versus the Great Lakes version – the one played in the Twin Cities – which used a stick with a round, closed net pocket and deer hide-wrapped ball.

The modern, competitive game of lacrosse, by contrast, in which players wear protective padding, employs sticks up to 6 feet long and a rubber ball, which players use to catch, carry, and shoot into the opposing team’s goal. Although it is one of the fastest-growing sports on U.S. college campuses, and 69 countries are represented within World Lacrosse (the international governing body), lacrosse has not been included in the Olympic Games since 1908.

One of the many teams looking to change that is the Haudenosaunee Nationals men’s lacrosse squad. The team finished third at the last two world championship competitions and says it is the only Indigenous team in any sport to compete at that level.

But the Nationals have bumped up against administrative hurdles in some international competitions. While the Haudenosaunee have their own passports, their members come from parts of Ontario and upstate New York.

“There were questions about, are we a legitimate participant? Are we a country? It’s been interesting to engage with governments, who are not fully cognizant of our status,” says Leo Nolan, the executive director of the Nationals.

And though the team plays the modern version of the game during competitions, it tries to retain the traditional, community aspect of the original activity. Oren Lyons, the team’s faith keeper, helps the team maintain spirituality and peace by performing a ceremony with tobacco before each game as a way of “reaching to the Creator,” says Mr. Nolan.

“It’s important for all of us to understand what lacrosse was originally about,” says Mr. Nolan. “Now over the course of time, lacrosse has moved on to a more contemporary game, but it doesn’t mean we don’t respect what the Creator gave us. One of our responsibilities is to share this game with others.”

Still, some players are ambivalent about advertising the intricacies of traditional styles of lacrosse to a wider public, due to the way Indigenous people’s cultural traditions have been erased in the past.

“Many cultural holders don’t want to share their practices because they feel like they will be attacked again, and there’s been a long history of control and repression,” says Janice Forsyth, associate professor of sociology and the director of Indigenous Studies at Western University in London, Ontario.

“There are others who want to say, ‘Hey, we’ve survived and we’re still here.’ ... Communities will decide whether it’s important to revive their own ball-and-stick game and decide who they want to be.”

“Learn the history”

Out on the pitch at the Oxford Community Center, players from the TC Native Lacrosse team gather at the sidelines for a midmatch water break. The team includes people of all tribes, but the game focuses primarily on Ojibwe and Dakota traditions. Mr. Butler, who ran today’s game, says he hopes lacrosse can become as accessible as soccer or basketball. “You get some sticks, a ball, and a couple of people and it’s a game.”

Mr. Butler has taken his community lacrosse know-how to South High School in Minneapolis, where he runs the All Nations Program, an academic curriculum designed for American Indian students. He’s gotten an informal lacrosse group together and has been teaching students how to make their own sticks.

“It’s important for them to know how and why you do it,” he says, “and to learn the history.”

For Chris Knutsen and Alexandrah Walker, lacrosse is especially meaningful – they met at a pickup match and got engaged six years later to the day. Mr. Knutsen, who has played both modern and community lacrosse, says he approaches the two games differently.

“When I play modern lacrosse, it’s more competitive and I’m hard on myself,” he says, tossing a ball made of deer hide during a water break. “With the community game, I feel more happy and uplifted. It’s OK to make mistakes.”

Ms. Walker did her undergraduate thesis on lacrosse’s power to heal trauma and wants to continue teaching the game to others.

“For a long time I didn’t want to play, but now I always have sticks; we give them away to encourage people to play,” says Ms. Walker, who says lacrosse sticks are an extension of self, each one with its own spirit.

“It’s our game. Every tribe has its own story. We’re trying to reclaim and revitalize it, ... the Creator’s game. We want to take it with us everywhere we go.”

How do you save a historically significant cultural area without displacing the very people who make it unique? This is the situation facing the Kumhars of Banmir village, artisans whose ancestry traces back to the Neolithic potters of the region known as Gufkral (in Kashmiri, gufh means “cave” and kral means “potter”). 

Archaeologists, who began excavation in 1981, have found artifacts dating back to 2000-3000 B.C., including polished stone celts (similar to an ax or hoe) and other tools made from stone and bone.

A government plan to conserve the ancient caves would protect the archaeological legacy while threatening to upend the lives and  livelihoods of the Gufkral community. The multichambered caverns are not only home, studio, and warehouse to 15 remaining Gufkral households, but also part of the potters’ lineage and identity. 

If the families are forced to leave, the area will lose a key cultural resource. It is not the caves alone that are a part of the Neolithic history of Kashmir: The Gufkral community is equally important to understanding these caves as a living system instead of mere dug-out hollows.

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Bilal Ahmed Kumhar throws a pot on the wheel. The soil used in the earthenware is becoming more difficult to obtain, as the land around the caves is sold off for development and farming.

The inhabitants have persisted despite the hardships of making a living from their craft. “I have been a potter for the last 60 years, as my ancestors did for centuries,” says Assadullah Kumar. “But our children are now inclined toward new opportunities that would bring a stable income.” Young people are more apt to pursue an education, work as day laborers, or take up farming, he says.  

Manzoor Ahmad Kumar (the potters use variations of “Kumhar” as their last names, but they are not all related) grew up working with clay. As the land around the caves is sold off for residential and agricultural purposes, he says the potters face difficulties in obtaining the soil used for their earthenware. 

Women as well as men contribute to the family business. Says Mehmooda Bano, “My husband and I work very hard to keep this ancient craft alive.” 

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Wasim Ahmed Kumhar, who is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in humanities, prepares the clay. Many young people are not interested in carrying on the family business because of the economic difficulties their parents have faced.

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Kneading the clay is one of the most important steps in the process.

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Abdul Khaliq Kumhar shapes a vessel at his home.

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Ghulam Ahmad Kumhar keeps watch over the kiln during firing.

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Nisar Ahmed Kumhar (right) and his younger brother Irshad Ahmad Kumhar carefully organize the finished pots.

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Brightly painted cups, bowls, vessels, pipe bowls, and flower vases are some examples of the items for sale in Nazeer Ahmed Kumhar’s shop. The prices range from 13 cents to about $12.

Reuters

A family in Kyiv, Ukraine, visits an exhibition of destroyed Russian military vehicles on Independence Day, Aug. 24.

In a news report on how Ukraine has changed six months after the Russian invasion, a Financial Times reporter went to an underground music club in the capital, Kyiv. There he saw a DJ at the turntables unfurl a large Ukrainian flag.

“Glory to Ukraine,” the DJ screamed.

“Glory to the heroes,” the crowd screamed back.

Such joyful unity among young Ukrainians may seem like merely wartime patriotism. But it is not. In an Aug. 24 speech marking 31 years of independence from the Russia-dominated Soviet Union, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a new nation appeared when Ukraine was invaded Feb. 24.

Six months later, “we changed history, changed the world, and changed ourselves. ... We started to respect ourselves,” he said.

As The Kyiv Independent put it, Ukraine is a very different country from a year ago because “its values, ideas, and future are more concrete than ever.”

If love is self-negation and loving one’s neighbors, then Ukrainians learned quickly how to love their country – through the sacrifices of soldiers (more than 9,000 killed) and the selfless giving of those supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty against the second-largest military in the world.

Rather than hold an independence parade on Wednesday, Kyiv displayed the symbols of an empty type of patriotism on its main street: the wrecked tanks from Russia’s failed attempt to take the city in March. That early victory for Ukraine reflected how much its soldiers have absorbed the democratic values that give them an edge – enough liberty to take individual initiative on the battlefield but accountability to the goals of a civilian, elected government.

“We are not afraid because we have complete faith in our defenders, the armed forces of Ukraine,” one civilian, Viktoria Skovroska, told The Wall Street Journal.

Ukraine’s rapid shift in identity shows up in the latest poll taken in July by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

During the early years of independence, a majority of people associated more with a region, language, or ethnicity than with Ukraine as a nation. After two democratic revolutions in 2004 and 2013, 64.4% put Ukrainian citizenship first. Soon after the war started, support of a national civic identity rose to 84.6%.

Even among ethnic Russians in the areas controlled by Moscow, it’s 78%. These numbers defy a claim by Russian President Vladimir Putin that there is no such thing as the Ukrainian nation.

The country’s cohesion around democratic ideals – especially freedom from invasion and the integrity of nation-state borders – serves a purpose beyond Ukraine. It has united the European Union to make sacrifices on Ukraine’s behalf.

“We turned out to be the heart of Europe,” President Zelenskyy told The Washington Post. “And we made this heart beat.”