In a recently released video, actress Shailene Woodley tearfully remarks on the “false narratives” that she believes most American children learn about Thanksgiving, American history, and colonization in school. Woodley’s comments were inspired by her fierce opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, which she feels is being built despite the impact it will have on the environment and on Native American tribes. Woodley is perhaps the best-known of the thousands who have turned out to protest the DAPL Pipeline, and she is among many who have been jailed for her political activism.
Woodley is probably correct that most elementary school teachers don’t open their lessons about Thanksgiving by edifying seven-year-olds about The Wounded Knee Massacre. However, I suspect she is incorrect in postulating that most Americans are unaware of this country’s history of colonialism. By the time I was in middle school, all of my history classes featured units on colonialism and the persecution of minorities in America. As early as sixth and seventh grade, my classmates and I were taught that Christopher Columbus was more or less genocidal.
In addition, the evils of American colonialism are well-publicized by virtually every mainstream media outlet in the United States. The New York Times, for example, does not shy away from discussing the history of colonialism and the violent suppression of minorities in the U.S., and would never perpetuate the narratives that the white settlement of America was somehow peaceful or welcomed by Native Americans.
In making this argument, I don’t mean to say that what is happening at Standing Rock is acceptable. True conservatives support small federal governments who utilize violence against their own citizens only in the most extreme of cases. The fact that government agents are using tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters should trouble anyone who prizes liberty and free speech.
However, it is also important for Americans to recognize the complexity of the matter at hand. The narrative that the mainstream media is perpetuating about the DAPL pipeline is one-sided and omits a number of facts. For one thing, the pipeline does not run through any Native American land, and the company that is constructing the pipeline worked extensively with Native Americans for years before commencing the project. In some cases, it has been Native American tribes that have been unwilling to meet and try to defend their point of view, or forge compromises between the conflicting sides.
Furthermore, The Hill reported that objective authorities in North Dakota have stated that the section of the pipeline that will run through North Dakota will not damage any historic sites, Native American or otherwise; “The entire route through North Dakota was approved by the state Historic Preservation Office, which issued a ‘no significant sites affected’ determination in February. The state’s chief archaeologist said in early September that ‘due diligence under existing regulatory law and regulation was done.'”
The reality is that the current feud over the DAPL is complex. This is not a straightforward matter of evil corporate executives exploiting Native Americans and plowing through sacred lands. Instead, it is a question of balancing the production of resources with environmental concerns, and of the clashes between the right to peacefully protest and the importance of law and order. Shailene Woodley, like so many others in this debate, reduces the complex nature of these problems to simplistic sound bites that cannot capture the intricate nature of this problem.
