Are DAPL Protests a Hoax?

CNN provides evidence that they are:

The Standing Rock Sioux call this reservation home, and many are not on the frontlines of this months-long, and at times violent, protest. With no end in sight, what does it mean to them? And are they even united in their support?

The answer to that last question: Not even close.. 

Fool Bear has had it with the protesters. He says that more than two years ago, when members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe could have attended hearings to make their concerns known, they didn't care. Now, suddenly, the crowds are out of control, and he fears it's just a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt. 

Go down to the camps, he says, and you won't see many Standing Rock Sioux....

Ten miles west of the protests, a man who doesn't want to be named, for fear of retribution, admits he looks forward to the pipeline. It'll mean fewer trucks barreling down these rural highways and fewer trains flying down the tracks.  

The Daily Beast points out that this looks like a classic manipulation:

Anti-DAPL activists say they don’t want the DAPL built here. But in reality, they don’t want it built anywhere. Their real goals are combating fossil fuel development, moving America toward renewables, and mitigating global climate change. (At present, oil, gas, and coal comprise 81 percent of American energy consumption. Renewables comprise 5 percent.)  

And that’s why they love to hate pipelines. The much-debated and for-now-denied Keystone XL, which would transport crude oil from Canadian tar sands to American ports, is perhaps the most infamous. But there are many others, including the Spectra Algonquin AIM pipeline being built across the Northeast, attracting protests in Boston and New York, where the route now runs 105 feet from an aging nuclear power plant.

Local ranchers are so fed up with violent protesters illegally occupying ranchland that they are actually selling their ranchland to DAPL:

Apparently land owner David Meyer is fed up with it. 

“It’s a beautiful ranch, but I just wanted out,” he told the folks at KXNews. 

Meyer is a local, private citizen. I can’t imagine how difficult his situation has been with these on-going protests. Last month the Bismarck Tribune reported “damage to an ATV, stolen tools and windows busted out of equipment” at a quonset on Meyer’s land, though the paper said there is no “hard evidence” linking the damage to protesters. 

Hard to imagine that’s a coincidence, though.

Few people have heard why the firemen deployed water cannons, because few news sources are describing the violence deployed by the protesters against the small contingent of small-town police trying to contain the situation.

It seemed the peaceful protesters as you might call them who were there stayed back out of the range of the water. You could see the line form back away from that water so that they wouldn’t come forward any more,” the deputy said. “I would call them more peaceful protesters. The agitators, many of them stayed out there in the water and continued to harass, continued to try and push forward, continue to try and cut chains, cut wire, and come at us.” 

Many critics of the law enforcement response have suggested that officers were aggressive toward the protesters, but when I asked the deputy if law enforcement ever advanced from the roadblock toward the protesters he said “absolutely not.” 

“The majority of the people I see out there were white people,” the deputy told me. 

“None of us wanted to move forward,” he continued. “None of us wanted to do that. We just held our line. We have to hold our line, because if those people get through those people who are trying to hurt us, what are they going to do to the good people of the state who aren’t trained to defend themselves?”

“We held that line,” he added. “We told them ‘go back to your camp, but don’t come out here and attack us’.”

We know a lot about the DAPL. Most of it is in contradiction to what people think is going on.

To start, the pipeline’s path, which has been set for two years, does not enter the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The portion being protested is on private property and does not run on previously undisturbed land. It follows a pre-existing energy corridor in which electricity transmission lines and the Northern Border natural gas pipeline already lay.

The protests might also give the false impression that Native American tribes had no input to the project. The public record shows that they did. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held 389 meetings with 55 tribes to discuss the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe met with the corps nearly a dozen times to discuss archaeological issues and to help finalize the pipeline’s route 

No one has shown that any sensitive tribal land is being jeopardized by the pipeline. Nor is there reason to fear that the pipeline would compromise the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s water supply. The Missouri River in North Dakota already is traversed by eight pipelines that safely transport energy products every day.  And the tribe’s water intake is scheduled to be moved later this year to a spot roughly 70 miles from the Dakota Access Pipeline’s river crossing.

A sheriff visited the site, and says the MSM is lying. According to the New York Post, the protesters are anything but peaceful. This looks a lot like the Sioux Tribes are being used as pawns in a much bigger game.
Are they?
And, if they are, which side should we be on?