Malia Obama ditches Palm Springs for Sundance pipeline protest

Jayme Deerwester | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Shailene Woodley praises Malia Obama for attending pipeline protest Malia Obama reportedly attended a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Sundance Film Festival this week. Shailene Woodley stated, "It was amazing to see Malia, President Obama’s daughter…"

If Malia Obama's first week as a former first daughter is anything to go by, the 18-year-old's re-entry into civilian life appears to be going smoothly.

Take, for example, her trip to the Sundance Film Festival. On Monday, she attended an event supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline (which was revived in an executive action signed by President Trump this week) and nobody seemed to notice for days.

In fact, the story only gained traction once actress and anti-DAP activist Shailene Woodley mentioned it in a Wednesday interview with the website DemocracyNow.org.

"It was amazing to see Malia," Woodley said. "To witness a human being and a woman coming into her own outside of her family and outside of the attachments that this country has on her, but someone who's willing to participate in democracy because she chooses to, because she recognizes, regardless of her last name, that if she doesn't participate in democracy, there will be no world for her future children."

As part of her gap-year to-do list, Obama begins an internship with the Weinstein Company in February.

She'll enroll at Harvard University in the fall.