Comment #3 Tribes Make Stand Against Pipeline
This week’s article, ‘I Want to Win Someday’: Tribes Make Stand Against Pipeline, in the New York Times was about the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s struggle against the pipeline that is being built across their land. As of right now the situation is being handled by a federal judge on whether the construction can continue on the pipeline. The tribe is worried about the Missouri River being polluted by the pipeline. The sad thing is that this isn’t the first time people have taken advantage of this tribe. Fifty years ago the government built the Oahu Dam along the Missouri River which ended up forcing the tribe to relocate 190 families from their homes. This dam caused flooding across the tribe’s sacred ground, which included burial sites.
This article did give a lot of information but I feel that it was biased in a way. It shed sort of a bad light on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their protests. They make them look stupid by saying that they already knew about the pipeline being built in their area but I’ve read other articles that say otherwise. They also focus on things that I feel don’t necessarily matter and leave some important issues out.
First they brought up how the protest has caught the attention of famous individuals. I could see where this is somewhat interesting but they go on to say that Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee, took part in some of the protests. She went as far as vandalizing one of the bulldozers with spray paint. Since I have literally never heard about this person in my life it’s most likely that she did this outrageous stunt to draw attention to herself because bad publicity is still publicity in a politician’s world. But why write about this when there are more important things to point out?
They left out the part where the security guard’s dogs attacked innocent people. Yet the article stressed that they considered the protest a riot. I read from another article that one of the people attacked by the dogs was a pregnant woman; I can’t believe they didn’t put that in the article because to me that’s a pretty big deal. A security guard directed their dog’s attack onto a pregnant woman and nothing was done about it because it apparently was her fault for being at the protest. I just hope that in the end the federal judge gives this tribe a break because they have obviously been through a lot already.