If I lived closer to North Dakota, I think I'd probably go out to these protests.
I'm not a big fan of the NPR spin, where this is somehow part of some overarching American nastiness toward minority groups (especially Native Americans). Oh, they're using dogs, just like in Selma! Whatever.
But I would still go, just because I get not liking having people steamroller your home in the name of 'progress,' oil-related or not. I don't have a problem with oil. I just have a problem with the use of wealth and force to override a community's will about the place where it lives and eats.
Apparently Jill Stein got arrested out there for tagging a bulldozer with spraypaint. My sense of what ought to be done with unwanted bulldozers is somewhat more severe.
Smells like a cheap political stunt to take heat off HRC
ReplyDeleteWhen I did a google search no local news sources turned up, so I looked up the local Newspapers and found these stories. Googles NYT & NPRstories are full of crap as usual.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/opinion/guest/all-eyes-on-north-dakota-full-story-isn-t-being/article_5dc1e955-fd71-5003-86be-0fa0f29d7fbc.html
http://www.grandforksherald.com/news/4110312-state-archaeologist-visit-pipeline-site-where-tribe-says-sacred-sites-were-destroyed
- Mississippi
Really awful news coverage. Every story I found simply quoted people claiming that sacred sites or drinking water was threatened; no explanations. There are people that hate all pipelines, which is what I take these groups to be. Oil=bad. This is not people objecting to the presence of bulldozers on their land. They're objecting to bulldozers on other people's land because they object to the project itself.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if that's true or not -- as you say, the coverage is awful. Sometimes "other people's land" really means eminent domain has been used to seize yours against your will. That kind of thing is inherently troublesome, and while I understand that there may be cases in which it is necessary, I suspect it isn't necessary in many cases. As I'm sure I've mentioned, the county seized a part of my parents' land -- my favorite part, where I used to play as a boy -- and bulldozed it to put in a sewer. This was to support a development that the county didn't really need at all, but all the commissioners were also developers. That's why they ran for the county commission in the first place.
ReplyDeleteActually, it ended up that they never built the development. So they used misappropriated government power to seize and destroy something I loved, something beautiful, in order to put in a sewer in the hope of padding their pockets. There wasn't any necessary government reason to do it; they just hoped they might personally make money off it someday.
These are the kinds of people who give me the sense that it's worth at least listening to the Sioux on this issue. Maybe they're all radical anti-oil people, but maybe not.
I can get pretty upset over abuse of eminent domain, but not one of the articles mentioned anything close to that. Not to say that isn't going on, but for Pete's sake, couldn't some reporter bother to mention it? I'm posing the same question to a neighbor who's all wrought up over this on Facebook. I confessed to her I'm just not getting the issue.
ReplyDeleteI've seen nothing that indicates that they're actually on reservation land, but 'near' it. Supposedly destroying archeological burial grounds, that somehow no one knew about before. Smells fishy- same old tired tactics, and so they run the risk of the boy-who-cried-wolf where the one time they're on the up-and-up, I won't believe them.
ReplyDelete