Amongst all the chaos on social media about the upcoming presidential election, you may have heard about something called the Dakota Access Pipeline or its acronym, “DAPL.” Specifically, you’ve probably been seeing a lot of shared links on Facebook or Twitter to articles about protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. If you’re anything like me, you’ve most likely developed a vague understanding of what Dakota Access Pipeline controversy is based solely on how much you’ve skimmed through these links. However, because of recent events and how the situation has escalated, I decided to take a closer and more critical look at this event. Here’s what I’ve gathered from my observations, and why you should start paying closer attention to this as well.

First of all, it’s important to understand exactly what the Dakota Access Pipeline is. According to the website for the project itself, the Dakota Access Pipeline is, “…a new approximate 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline that will connect the rapidly expanding Bakken and Three Forks production areas in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline will enable domestically produced light sweet crude oil from North Dakota to reach major refining markets in a more direct, cost-effective, safer and environmentally responsible manner.” The website also states that the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline will, “…provide a critical link to help close the gap between what we produce as a country and what we consume as we work to be truly independent of energy from unstable regions of the world. Every barrel of crude oil produced in the United States directly displaces a barrel of imported foreign oil.” This is an understandable viewpoint. As a country, we are much too dependent on foreign production and imports for crucial resources like oil. However, the adverse side effects from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline are not worth the final result.

So, what are the side effects? Well, the biggest one, and the one that is receiving the most attention on social media at the moment, is how the pipeline is encroaching upon protected Native American lands, posing a major potential environmental threat to reservations and sacred lands. Specifically, the Standing Rock Sioux are spearheading the majority of protests in regard to Native American lands, since it is mostly their land in jeopardy. According to an article written by Aaron Sidder titled “Understanding the Controversy Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline,” the Standing Rock Sioux, “…opposes the pipeline's construction near the Sioux reservation on the grounds that it threatens their public health and welfare, water supply and cultural resources.” The Sioux began protesting in April in what has transformed from a small camp to a group of over a thousand protestors. The Sioux also sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a federal court in an attempt to have the construction of the pipeline stopped. Although the Sioux lost the lawsuit, according to Sidder's article, several other federal agencies have halted construction of the pipeline on Sioux lands as a result of the lawsuit.

Recent “side effects” have kicked publicity of the DAPL Controversy into overdrive. These include the arrest of Shailene Woodley for participating in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and the arrest of filmmaker Amy Goodman for reporting and documenting the protests. Amy Goodman now faces up to 45 years of prison time. Rumors of missing and butchered livestock in construction areas have even begun to emerge.

As this situation escalates more and more each day, the repercussions of the DAPL grow more numerous. The Dakota Access Pipeline project is no longer just the construction of an oil pipeline through over a thousand miles of privately owned and indigenous lands. It has, as Aaron Sidder puts it in his article, “…come to represent a battleground over larger philosophical and ideological issues. As one protester tells Jeff Brady for NPR, ‘It's about our rights as native people to this land. It's about our rights to worship. It's about our rights to be able to call a place home, and it's our rights to water.’” The conflict also displays the amount of power private companies and corporations have in this country and over our government.

I urge you to resist the completion of this project. It may seem like a logical solution to one of our country’s biggest flaws, but the consequences are not worth the end result. Also, unsurprisingly, there has been very little mainstream media coverage on the subject. So, the best way for you to aid the protests are to make this mainstream. Share everything you can about the protests. Learn about the DAPL Controversy, teach and tell others, and hopefully, we’ll see some positive change. It’s about time that this country starts to head in a better direction, but it’s up to all of us to take the first steps.