And while Native Americans often took a leading role in the protests, one could also argue that their concerns were often being exploited for other activists’ agendas.
Native Americans march to the site of a sacred burial ground that was disturbed by bulldozers building the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), near the encampment where hundreds of people have gathered to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s protest of the oil pipeline slated to cross the nearby Missouri River, September 4, 2016 near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
Protesters were attacked by dogs and sprayed with an eye and respiratory irritant yesterday when they arrived at the site to protest after learning of the bulldozing work. / AFP / ROBYN BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
A couple of weeks AT (Ante Trump) The Ave published the facts about the Standing Rock Protests.
In summary, the pipeline issue was apparently mainly an opportunity for protest rather than a real environmental problem.
There never was a reason to worry about the water supply. Even if the location of the oil pipeline might have been a danger to the reservation’s water, there were already plans to move the water pipeline away from the route for the oil pipeline.
So what has been achieved? The Corps of Engineers has rerouted the pipeline slightly probably more to do something abut the protests than to achieve an effect on the ecology of North Dakota.
Was there Solidarity? Not so much. With no defined cause, the protesters, having helped elect Trump by diverting attention from the campaign, now face winter snows. They are going home.
This is so different from the great protests during civil rights. A movement with no cause leads no where.
(from the Daily Beast)One might argue that the gestural, romantic politics of the pipeline protest, to the extent they diverted energy away from the election, ultimately contributed to a far, far worse situation for both the climate and for Native Americans. In a sense, the DAPL protests were a kind of political fantasy, a distraction. They were full of stereotyping of Wise Native Americans—not among the hard core activists, of course, but certainly among the hundreds of thousands of more who were Standing with Standing Rock by sitting on their sofas. There were New Age prayer vigils for Standing Rock, just like the Evangelical prayer vigils for Trump.
There was plenty of heated rhetoric: the protest site is “Sacred Stone Camp,” the pipeline is the “Black Snake.” And while Native Americans often took a leading role in the protests, one could also argue that their concerns were often being exploited for other activists’ agendas.