This pipeline represents something deeper: Voices from Standing Rock
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.
In America’s unsettled and angry winter of 2016, people on all sides of a fractious issue are here to make a stand and have their voices heard.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,170-mile, $3.8 billion project to carry oil extracted from rock through four states to refineries and pipeline networks in Illinois. It is more than 90 percent complete.
To its fans, the pipeline represents America’s energy independence, jobs and a common-sense boost for the economy. What happens next also may offer an early glimpse of the presidency of Donald Trump, an outspoken advocate for removing environmental barriers to U.S. energy production — and an investor in an oil company that owns a 25 percent stake in the pipeline project.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/this-pipeline-represents-something-deeper-voices-from-standing-rock/2016/12/01/d8a0ddfa-b673-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?utm_term=.21d1927bd747&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1