Race and protesting

On Thursday, Oct. 27 over 140 protesters in North Dakota were arrested while trying to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). That same day, seven members of the Malheur militia were found not guilty of nearly every charge related to the Oregon standoff that occurred last January. The motives for each protest are remarkably different, but they make for interesting comparisons.

In Oregon, a group of heavily armed, white ranchers, blanketed by the Constitution, occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Named the Bundy Clan, after their leader Cliven Bundy, the group protested what they considered to be government tyranny, coming in the form of federal control of western land. For more than a month they occupied the refuge. Law enforcement gave the members space to stage their insurrection by letting them come and go as they pleased and choosing not to provoke them. During their stay, members of the Bundy Clan defiled Native American artifacts and burial grounds and threatened police with assault rifles, but continued to contend that they posed no threat to the public.

At stake in North Dakota are two futures: the continuation of construction on the DAPL, a $3.7 billion project that will span 1,170 miles from North Dakota to Illinois, and the health of an entire Native American population that relies on the area’s water supply. Company officials contend that DAPL will be a safer way of transporting oil. But others say it threatens not only the region’s water but also sacred cultural lands and tribal burial grounds. Since May, peaceful protesters have gathered on the land—which is deemed private property.

The peaceful water protectors, as they prefer to be called, have been met with police in riot gear and attacked by police dogs in September. That event garnered little national attention. But on Thursday, trucks and barricades went up in flames, and the water protectors were met by hundreds of militarized law enforcement using tanks, riot gear, rubber bullets, sound cannons, dogs, and mace. Of the people that were arrested, most had a number written on their arm as their only form of identification and many were kept in dog kennels—chain link fences that the police later referred to as temporary holding cells.

This time, people nationwide took notice. Many people took to Facebook, checking in at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Of course, the majority of people were not anywhere near North Dakota, but instead participated in a massive online movement that attempted to throw off local law enforcement from tracking protesters on social media. Although standing with the water protectors on Facebook is very different from physically protesting with them at Standing Rock, the positive attention and momentum generated is a step in the right direction.

Race cannot go unmentioned in any discussion of these protests. First, the Bundy Clan, comprised solely of white ranchers armed with assault rifles on sacred Native American land, were acquitted by an all-white jury. The Standing Rock protests has its origins in race as well: originally, the pipeline was supposed to cut through an area close to Bismark. However, after the residents of the majority-white city expressed concerns about it contaminating their water supply, it was moved to the Standing Rock area. When white Americans complain, DAPL was easily relocated, but when Native Americans do the same, they are met with an army and treated like an enemy to the country. White ‘activists’ have a very obvious advantage when protesting, and both incidents are just more examples of this imbalance.