way2go! 7. Coursebook, Schulbuch

114 Unit 07 | You be the judge Get into pairs and talk about the picture showing the construction of an oil pipeline. 1 Why might people oppose the construction of a pipeline? 2 What function does a pipeline have? 3 Why could it be dangerous? 4 What other ways to transport oil do you know and how safe are they? 5 What (other) protests concerning environmental issues have you heard of? SPEAKING 33 Read the story of a recent civic protest in the US and put the paragraphs into the correct order. READING 34 M p. 42 The youth group that launched a movement at Standing Rock A At the start, the camp seemed like a hopeless undertaking. Lakota culture is run by the old – traditionally young people are supposed to apologize before they even speak in front of elders –, so for the youths to lead a movement was a radical act. The tribal council agreed to the camp but offered little support. In early April 2016, with snow still on the ground, One Mind Youth moved into tepees on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. They called the prayer camp ‘Sacred Stone’ and lit the sacred fire. Life was lived ‘in ceremony’, a religious mindset in which all things are done with the intention of maintaining purity. Days began with a water ceremony; the sacred fire had to be regularly fed; meals began with prayer and a ‘spirit plate’ served for the ancestors; alcohol and drugs were strictly forbidden. B To gain more recognition, the young leaders decided to organize first a 500-mile relay run from the Sacred Stone Camp to deliver a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers in Omaha, asking it to deny the Dakota Access Pipeline permission to cross the Missouri River and later, a 2000-mile relay run to the Army Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The run inspired the belief that a group of lost people from scattered nations could still find kinship. At every reservation, the runners met with reservation youths, telling them about the old ways and the camp at Standing Rock, where those ways were being revived. C On December 4, 2016, the Department of the Army announced its decision to deny an easement 3 for the Dakota Access Pipeline route. The decision was an unexpected triumph. That night, as a blizzard descended on the camp, the reservation’s official tribal government held a ceremony around the main fire to thank the youths. “We all came here to stand for something greater than whatever we did at home,” a spokesman told the crowd as people lined up to shake the hands of the runners. The camp emptied out with winter bearing down, but most of the young people reunited in January for mass protests against Donald Trump. They were still in Washington when the news came that Trump had signed executive orders allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline construction to continue. D Despite their failure to stop the pipeline, all believe their work should continue because the movement had connected, as one activist says, “youths who would otherwise never have had much interaction.” He offers a practical reason as well: In December he got a call from a young person on the verge of suicide. He felt helpless, but he stayed on the phone, “listening to hear, not listening to respond. All I could do was say, ‘You are loved, someone 3 An easement will grant persons who don’t own a property some right to it, for example, to walk across a piece of land. In this case, it would have granted the company building the pipeline the right to build it on land belonging to the reservation. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv