Thinking Out Loud: Trajectory of Messages
This week is spring break and I confess to being 100% jealous of my colleagues that were able to get away this week. A little warm weather would go a long way for this girl!
BUT, I am really excited about my latest research regarding celebrity messages and the Dakota Access Pipeline. There are three agents I am considering (note: this is a rhetorical analysis and "agent" is fancy for "players," or "playas" if you are gangster). The agents are the media (mainly newspapers, print and online), Native Americans (mainly Standing Rock Chairman Archambault), and celebrities.
I was studying these agents to see how their messages changed during the course of the protests this last fall, months studied are June-Dec 2016. It quickly became clear that the more people that got involved, the more the message strayed. This isn't shocking, really. Early on the message from Standing Rock was to protect water and sacred sites; the media also shared this message. This indicated they were actually listening to the Native Americans...you know, the ones trying to preserve their way of life.
Then the celebrities arrived and all hell broke loose. They had their own messages - ranging from water to removing money from banks that fund DAPL. This isn't a bad thing, but they did remove the agency from the media. The messages being shared via celebrity social media and then the news media changed the initial message from Standing Rock. More and more the messages had to do with the environment, climate change, water, and Native American rights; the message of preserving sacred sites has been lost.
My theory, that has absolutely no backing whatsoever, is that people understand water. They understand the environment. We have heard climate change messages for years, so we know how to act. Save the planet and all that jazz. But how many of us have had to fight for sacred sites? Probably not too many, which is why celebrities are focusing their messages on the planet rather than preserving sites of importance for the original inhabitants of this land.
I am sympathetic to the fight to save sacred land. The cemetery that contains generations of my family is also at risk of desecration at the hands of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (those heartless bastards). The irony is they told us that if Native American remains were found on the land, the FM Dam could not be built in this location; yet they allowed desecration to occur near Standing Rock. Mind-boggling, right?
Note: this is a personal weblog and all posts are my opinion. Unless information is appropriately cited, everything I say is to be considered nothing more than ramblings as I conduct research.
