Saturday, December 3, 2016

On the Dakota Access Pipeline

This is one of the best pieces I have read about the Dakota Access Pipeline, in the Washington Post.  It's by Kevin Sullivan, and the headline is "'This Pipeline Represents Something Deeper':  Voices from Standing Rock.'" Here's the lede:
From across the country, they have come to this place called Cannon Ball. 
Thousands of them. 
Native Americans and military veterans. Environmentalists. Police from nine states. Movie stars. Cattle ranchers and lumberjacks, college students and nurses, landscapers, investment bankers and a waitress from a Florida restaurant called Smokey Bones. 
All have been drawn by a 30-inch steel pipe that, in the unlikely setting of a desolate North Dakota prairie, has become a powerful symbol of heritage and history, progress and oppression, indigenous rights and corporate might.
* * *
To its opponents, the pipeline represents the latest chapter in the nation’s long history of disrespect and abuse of Native Americans. It runs within a half-mile of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and tribal leaders argue that it threatens the drinking water for thousands of Native Americans and has caused the destruction of sacred artifacts and burial sites.
The report features videos of a number of folks, including tribal leaders.  Five hundred and sixty people have been arrested since the beginning of the protests.

And now we wait to see what President-Elect Trump will do ....

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