The protest over the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock has taken a bizarre turn.  The Native American tribes who originally protested against the pipeline have been displaced by thousands of college students, environmental activists, and outside agitators who have no respect for the land nor its inhabitants.

Apparently, the hippies have taken over.

Washington Times:

“Need to get something off my chest that I witnessed and found very disturbing in my brief time there that I believe many others have started to speak up about as well. White people colonizing the camps,” Alicia Smith said in a Facebook post.

“They are coming in, taking food, clothing etc and occupying space without any desire to participate in camp maintenance and without respect of tribal protocols,” she wrote. “These people are treating it like it is Burning Man or The Rainbow Gathering and I even witnessed several wandering in and out of camps comparing it to those festivals.”

Her Nov. 14 post, now making the rounds on social media, said outsiders are “literally subsisting entirely off the generosity of native people (AND YOUR DONATIONS if you have been donating) who are fighting to protect their water just because they can.”

A local deputy who asked to remain anonymous told WDAY AM’s Rob Port that most of the protesters are white, and that some have used racial slurs against black, Hispanic and American Indian officers.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II, who is leading the protest, raised concerns about sanitation in a Nov. 23 interview with Vice, saying activists are “digging pits out there for their human waste.”

The spoiled white kids are expecting others to feed them, clothe them, and clean up after their mess without lifting a finger to help.

“Before this entire movement started, that was some of the most beautiful land around,” Mr. Archambault said. “There was a place down there where eagles, over 100 eagles, would come and land. There were game down there — deer, pheasants, elk, geese. Now it’s occupied by people. And when masses of people come to one place, we don’t take care of it.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has given protesters on federal land north of the Cannonball River until Dec. 5 to clear the area, but leaders of the large Sacred Stone, or Oceti Sakowin, camp have said they will fight eviction.

“We are a coalition of grassroots groups living and working at the encampments, and we will not be moved,” the camp said on its website. “We stand united in defiance of the black snake and are committed to defense of water, our Mother Earth, and our rights as Indigenous people. We call on all people of conscience, from all Nations, to join the encampments and stand with us as we put our bodies on the line.”

A Nov. 3 post on Facebook by Jon Petronzio told would-be protesters to leave drugs and alcohol at home, warning: “This is not burning man or a festival. Do not bring your party at the expense of these people fighting for life and death.”

He said later that he had made the post in a “bout of anger and frustration at non-natives.”

The myths about the idyllic life lived by Native Americans before the white man arrived to destroy that paradise has persisted since the 1960s and has attracted middle-class and rich white young people for generations.  But the irony is that none of these kids could have survived how Native Americans lived 500 years ago – at sea without flush toilets and electric lights.

The reality is that most Native Americans lived a brutal existence – a daily fight for survival by men and women.  They may have infused the natural world with spiritualism, but that didn't make their lives any less perilous.  Backbreaking work, dangers from animals and tribal enemies, short life spans, sky-high infant mortality – life was a constant battle.  (There were some tribes and confederations that tilled the soil and established towns as sophisticated and advanced as any in Europe.)

Imagine some of these snowflakes transported back in time to that era.  They'd be reduced to a quivering mass of Jell-O in less than a day.

The hippies haven't a clue about the stewardship of the land.  That makes you wonder what the heck they're doing protesting with Native Americans about land use.