More Than one Million ‘Check In’ On Facebook To Support The Standing Rock Sioux
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters gather in a circle to hear speakers and singers at a protest encampment last month near Cannon Ball, N.D. Robyn Beck /AFP/Getty Pics hide caption
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters gather in a circle to hear speakers and singers at a protest encampment last month near Cannon Ball, N.D.
Robyn Beck /AFP/Getty Photos
More than one million people have “checked in” on Facebook to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation page, in a display of support for the tribe that has been rallying against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Most of the “visitors” are not actually at the protest camp in North Dakota, where the tribe and its supporters are gathering to oppose the pipeline. The planned route crosses the Missouri Sea just upstream of the reservation, and the tribe says it could contaminate drinking water and harm sacred grounds. Facebook permits people to check in to places even if they are not physically present.
A broadly circulated rumor on social media over the weekend suggested that local police were using Facebook check-ins to track activists protesting the pipeline.
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Activists then called for supporters of the protest to check-in en masse, in a stir designed to confuse police.
“Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them,” one widely collective post said, according to The Guardian.
It’s not clear who began the rumor, but the response was instant. “The number of check-ins at the Standing Rock reservation page went from 140,000 to more than 870,000 by Monday afternoon,” the Guardian reports. Now, that number stands at more than 1.Five million.
However, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department said in a Facebook post Monday afternoon that it “does not go after Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location” and called the report “absolutely false.”
The demonstration of solidarity from these Facebook users comes days after “police and National Guard troops arrested more than one hundred forty protesters near a construction site,” Inwards Energy’s Amy Sisk reported on All Things Considered. On Friday, there were reports of police using pepper drizzle against protesters they liquidated from land possessed by the pipeline company, as we reported.