In favor of highlighting very real discomforts of life in an ad hoc camp, the Globe’s report downplayed the Dakota Access Pipeline’s threat to water, the militarization and overt violence of the police in response to the protest, and the construction company’s disregard for sacred tribal land (“Devotion and despair fill teeming ND camp’’). The piece entirely ignored the climate-changing implications of yet another segment of fossil fuel infrastructure that we do not need. Hidden deep in the article is the impending forced removal of the camp, on Dec. 5. If you know any American history, the term “forced removal’’ of a Native American camp should make you shudder.

In a country where armed white “cowboys’’ could seize US government property at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and then be treated with kid gloves for weeks before being acquitted for their crime, the contrasting violence that meets the unarmed peaceful protest over the protection of clean water is a disgrace. The pipeline is both a desecration of history, trampling Native American sacred ground, and an insult to the future, supporting the infrastructure of fossil fuel use and the creation of greenhouse gases. The Globe should treat this story with the respect it deserves.

Ted McIntyre

Franklin