By Sam Metz AP/Report for America
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) --Myron Dewey, a filmmaker and journalist who helped draw worldwide attention to the concerns of Native Americans fighting an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, has died.
Dewey, a citizen of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, passed away Sunday when his car crashed in rural Nevada, the Nye County sheriff said. The 49-year-old had posted footage on Twitter a day earlier from a central Nevada military installation where he and other members of local tribes have long protested the proposed expansion of a U.S. Navy bombing range.
Dewey won acclaim for his live footage of the 2016 demonstrations over the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border. His visuals of Native Americans being sprayed with water cannons in freezing weather were viewed by hundreds of thousands after appearing online and in the news.
He later co-directed the documentary "Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock," which outlined the demonstrators' motivations — to preserve the environment and fight for clean water.
Friends and relatives said they will remember Dewey for his commitment to advocating for Native Americans, for being a devoted friend and family member and for the authenticity of his work.
"He was able to show a perspective and viewpoint that was simply being ignored because of the systemic oppression our people have encountered as long as we've been here," said Dewey's cousin Lance West. "It was his story to tell, and only someone like him could share it in a manner that really spoke to us."
Dewey was among a group of Native journalists arrested during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests when he filmed employees of the company constructing the pipeline. The Morton County sheriff accused him of stalking private security workers using a drone video recorder, but prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges.
His footage from the fight's front lines was one episode in a long career of chronicling Indigenous and environmental issues throughout North America.
Dewey founded the media production company Digital Smoke Signals, which produced work about schools on reservation land in Nevada and about tribal land management practices in the Pacific Northwest.
In recent months, he participated in demonstrations against a proposed lithium mine near the Nevada-Oregon border and the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation. Environmentalists and local Native Americans oppose the project, saying it would desecrate land the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone consider sacred and have adverse environmental impacts on the region's residents.
Dewey, who primarily resided in Schurz, Nevada, on the Walker River Paiute Reservation, started his career as a wildland firefighter in Nevada. He also worked as a professor, teaching courses on film at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and on digital media at Northwest Indian College in Washington state. He leaves behind a wife, Deborah Parker, five children and a nephew whom he considered a son.
"His every breath was a fight for his people," Parker told Indian Country Today, noting Dewey also was passionate about sharing his experiences as a Native American boarding school survivor. "He didn't want to be silent when others wanted him to be. He didn't want the atrocities to go unnoticed or unrecognized."
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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