From June 5 to 8, thousands of Indigenous and climate activists will gather along the route of the pipeline to demand that Enbridge Line 3, the 1,097-mile-long pipeline that carries crude oil from Alberta, Canada, through Minnesota, to Superior, Wisconsin, be stopped. At time of publication, the exact location was still being determined.
The new Enbridge Line 3 route cuts across tribal territories, including those of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Chippewa), and the Mississippi River headwaters and wetlands, which are crucial for the tribes’ sustenance, specifically to fish and gather wild rice. While Enbridge refers to it as a replacement, opponents argue it is a new route.
If completed, Enbridge 3 would cost more than $4 billion dollars and carry more than 760,000 barrels of toxic tar sand oil per day.
Enbridge is the largest pipeline network in North America and is currently feeling the heat of public outcry at various points along its pipelines. Many describe this wave of protests as a continuation of the demonstrations against the XL Keystone Pipeline and the 2016 Dakota Access Pipelines protests.
“Our Mother needs us to be brave, to give voice to the sacred and future generations. We’ve elevated the national profile of Line 3 through people power. Biden hears our voices, but the wetlands and wild rice need action.”
Numerous tribes, including the Red Lake Nation and the White Earth Nation, have filed lawsuits at both the federal and state levels to stop the Line 3 pipeline. By June 21, a decision is expected from the Minnesota court of appeals on “whether Enbridge adequately proved there is a demand for the oil that would be transported by Enbridge 3,” according to MinnPost.
In spite of the legal challenges, construction has moved forward on the pipeline. Peaceful protests, too, have continued. Additionally, in March, more than 350 co-signers sent a letter to President Joe Biden. And in April, Indigenous youth took their protests to Washington, D.C.
In an article for Indian Country Today, Mary Annette Pember (Red Cliff Tribe of Wisconsin Ojibwe) wrote, “Century-old treaties are increasingly being used to fight climate change and environmental issues for everyone, not just tribes.”
She cites the Treaty People Gathering website, which states: “Treaty education and protection are not the sole duty of Native people. It is the responsibility of non-Native people to know and respect the obligations included in federal and state treaties. Treaties protect all of us.”
The Ojibwe ceded impacted lands to the United States in a 1837 treaty, so long as “the privilege of hunting, fishing, and gathering the wild rice, upon the lands, the rivers and the lakes included in the territory ceded, is guaranteed to the Indians.”
Dawn Goodwin (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), co-founder of Resilient Indigenous Sisters Resisting (RISE), says, “We need to protect all that we have left of the sacred gifts and land. I said that I would do all that I could. And I have done all that I could in the legal system, thus far following that process. Now, they have failed us through regulatory capture and corporate financing. So now we need you.”
These actions focus not only on Enbridge Line 3 but also Enbridge Line 5, a pipeline that carries the oil from northern Wisconsin to northern Michigan, across the Straits of Mackinac and on to Ontario and Quebec, Canada, as Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe), founder of the Giniw Collective, underscores.
“Our Mother needs us to be brave, to give voice to the sacred and future generations. We’ve elevated the national profile of Line 3 through people power. Biden hears our voices, but the wetlands and wild rice need action,” Houska told The Progressive. “We cannot mitigate the climate crisis and we cannot stand idly by as DAPL and Line 5 fossil fuels flow illegally, as young people chain themselves to the Mountain Valley pipeline and Line 3. Stand up for what is right, stand up for those not yet born.”
In Michigan last fall, The Washington Post reported, Governor Gretchen Whitmer revoked “the 1953 easement that allows the [Enbridge 5 pipeline] to cross the straits, citing the ‘unreasonable risk’ that [these lines] pose to the Great Lakes and what she said were Enbridge’s ‘persistent’ breaches of the easement’s terms.”
In response, Enbridge argued that Line 5 is a cross-border foreign policy issue that needs to be heard at the federal level. On June 2, the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel rejected this argument in a legal brief.
Michigan, the brief says, is “invoking powers that are unique to a state sovereign” and asserting claims under Michigan laws “over a strip of land that is owned by the state, located within the state, and held in trust by the state for the public benefit of its people.”
Although construction on Enbridge Line 3 has resumed, it remains to be what will result from the legal actions and protests.