The New York Times doesn’t like to cover conservative protests. Take the annual March for Life each January. This year, their print coverage consisted of a grand total of two paragraphs (23 and 24) at the very end of the paper’s main weather story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, which left out the name of the march. That was an improvement from 2015 (a half-sentence in a hostile story) and 2014 (a stand-alone photograph of the event on Page A17 with a two-line caption).
But on Monday, the Times devoted an entire page to a Native American environmental protest. On the front page, they promoted it: “Protest on the Plains: Demonstrations against an oil pipeline in North Dakota are being called the largest, most diverse tribal action in at least a century.”
There were seven color photographs of protesters with names like Howard Eagle Shield and John Thomas Arnel and Apesanahkwat. Alyssa Schukar and Jack Healy began with their amazement:
NEAR CANNON BALL, N.D. — When visitors turn off a narrow North Dakota highway and drive into the Sacred Stone Camp, where thousands have come to protest an oil pipeline, they thread through an arcade of flags whipping in the wind. Each represents one of the 280 Native American tribes that have flocked here in what activists are calling the largest, most diverse tribal action in at least a century, perhaps since Little Bighorn.
They have come from across the Plains and the Mountain West, from places like California, Florida, Peru and New Zealand. They are Oglala Lakota, Navajo, Seneca, Onondaga and Anishinaabe. Their names include Keeyana Yellowman, Peter Owl Boy, Santana Running Bear and Darrell Holy Eagle.
Some came alone, driving 24 hours straight across the Plains when they saw news on social media about the swelling protest. Some came in caravans with dozens of friends and relatives. One man walked from Bismarck.
Others finished the journey in canoes.
On September 9, the Obama administration said it would not allow work on federal land along the route of Energy Transfer Partners's crude oil pipeline, less than an hour after a judge ruled construction could go forward on the $3.8 billion project. That company wasn't allotted any space to defend itself against this allegedly historic protest.
Video of the protesters doesn’t suggest a crowd anywhere near as massive as the March for Life in Washington. The Huffington Post suggested “Thousands” were present, but photos aren’t that impressive.
The Times offered small profiles of people who have come to protest, such as:
Ceanna Horned Eagle
NAKOTA AND KICKAPOO OF KANSAS“Many of our ways – our culture, our way of life, our spirituality, our language – we have slowly lost it,” said Ms. Horned Eagle, who has a prayer fan tattooed on her neck.
“But I have seen a change. We’re trying to relearn it or to gain it back. And this coming together gives me hope that my kids won’t have to fight as hard as my parents did, as I have,” she said.
