ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the discourse analysis to examine coverage of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline projects in considering how the Great Plains and its people are presented by the media. In the United States, as a democracy, the media plays an important role in informing the public on political issues but in the process also creating and controlling knowledge. The Native Americans of Fort Yates resent the obvious implication that their community is an area of low consequence for an oil leak. A “colony” usually refers to a state or area under the political control of another state, often at a distance from the colonizer, with the colony being utilized for resources, markets, and at times settlement by the colonizer. A state can also have an “internal colony,” with the dominant portion exerting political control over a subordinate area in the name of development, and invisible borders separating the state from the colony.
