I was finally able to put together the book about my climate alteration exhibit in Second Life for Burning Man 2, back in October 2019. The years between 2019 and now have been totally chaotic, so much has happened. The topic is still appropriate and the points I made are still valid, even more so.
Please read and share.
https://galleryno8.exposure.co/metamorphoses?source=share-galleryno8
Global Warming: a very passive title to address a very lethal problem.
Example: It is getting a little warm outside, nothing to worry about.
Climate Change: a perfect setup to generate perfect rebukes.
Example: The climate is always changing. climate is just doing what climate has always done and human activity has nothing to do with it.
Climate Crisis: a very selective term. It is only a crisis for the people immediately affected. Also falls into the maligned category of ¨alarmist¨
The term I adopted:
Climate Alteration: A very pointed terminology to address the impact human activity is having on the global climate. Our activities are altering climate systems on a global scale causing extreme weather events. Yes, temperatures on average across the globe are rising and this disturbance is causing extreme temperatures (hot and cold) extreme drought, extreme flooding, and extreme storms. The rise in global temperature has upset the balance. This alteration has been building up slowly as the oceans absorbed most of the extra heat. But now, plain to see for everyone paying attention to weather-related news or looking out their own windows, extreme weather is pushing organisms and plants to extinction. Our crops are being destroyed. The range of many insects, birds, and animals has shifted.
Here on this thread are the thousands of articles, references, and comments that illustrate Climate Alteration. We have documented how some are being innovative in developing mitigation strategies. Some are also being manipulative and stupid and we are intelligent enough to research and decide for our communities what we need to do if our governments do not act.
As animals and plants are forced to shift their range because of extremes in weather, so do people.
By now, you’re likely well aware of the climate crisis and its significant dangers to Indigenous communities the world over. The problem is especially magnified on islands and in coastal regions, where sea level rise can wipe away traditional homelands and make climate refugees of those who have been displaced. That’s true even right here on Turtle Island, where hundreds of Native communities — in South Dakota, Alaska, Florida, Hawai’i, Washington, and Louisiana — face existential threats.
And now, the first community to supposedly be moved from harm’s way — the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation — is facing a new set of problems. Just before the new year, the tribe filed a landmark civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against the state of Louisiana. In 2016, HUD granted Louisiana $48 million in aid to resettle the tribe. But, its complaint asserts, Louisiana failed to properly implement the grant and has ethnically and racially discriminated, violated tribal sovereignty, excluded cultural components central to a proper relocation program, and provided poor replacement housing.
The Jean Charles Chactaw Nation has always lived here, on the Isle de Jean Charles. The climate crisis and resultant rising sea levels have endangered the tribe’s homeland and forced many members to move to inadequate replacement housing in a new location. Photo credit: Chantel Comerdelle.
The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation has resided on the Isle de Jean Charles for five generations, since the ancestors of its citizens escaped the Trail of Tears in the early 1830s amid President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. Its homelands and burial grounds are located in a region facing perpetual devastation and erosion by storms and sea level rise. Since 1955, the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation has lost over 98 percent of its lands to the encroaching ocean.
It’s also worth noting that the tribe is located in Terrebonne Parish, a region notorious for oil extraction, high pollution rates, and environmental justice violations. The Parish and over 90 percent of its property are largely controlled by non-local fossil fuel and chemical companies. The infamous “Cancer Alley” is just upstream.
Watch this short documentary detailing the tribe’s relocation.
By filing its complaint with HUD, the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation is looking to the federal agency to investigate the grant-funded resettlement program, currently run by Louisiana’s Office of Community Development (OCD). The tribe hopes HUD will order OCD to respect tribal needs and authority as the program’s implementation proceeds.
The lawsuit is also significant in that, while the tribe has state recognition from Louisiana, it does not have federal recognition, which would extend access to more grants, disaster assistance, and various legal powers — including constitutional protections and self-governance recognized by the United States. Lakota Law will keep an eye on this case and report back to you. As always, we’re grateful to you for standing in solidarity with every community of color on the frontlines of environmental justice.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your unwavering dedication!
Chase Iron Eyes
Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project
Greetings from Pine Ridge. I’ll keep this email short and sweet — but only because I want you to spend your reading time on today’s blog! I’ve also recorded a short video, which you’ll see near the top of the blog page. What’s my topic? I’m highlighting the importance of Indigenous knowledge in tackling the climate crisis in the wake of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and convening of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Click above to watch a short video and read my blog about the importance of Indigenous knowledge when it comes to solving the climate crisis.
Please do read the blog, but here’s one of my key points. The climate crisis is real, it’s serious, and it’s existential — but that’s not a reason for pessimism. In order to win this fight, we must listen to one another, celebrate the good work being done, and tap into our resilience as human beings. We should recognize the victories we’re achieving now and incorporate both science and the understanding Indigenous communities have had for Unci Maka — our grandmother Earth — for thousands of years.
We know about resilience, and we aren’t scared of the apocalypse. In the era of colonization, we’ve already been living through it for generations. We haven’t lost our faith or our capacity for optimism, and we’re not going to give those up now. I invite you to hear my perspective and take on this challenge with me so the generations to come can tell an inspiring story of reconnection and recovery.
Wopila tanka — thank you for caring for Unci Maka!
Tokata Iron Eyes
Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project
I had arrived in Bismarck, North Dakota. Scroll back to the beginning of this blog and you can read about the history of events at Standing Rock. Some things have changed, many things have stayed the same. The things I witnessed there made me profoundly angry and sad. I saw militarized police practicing with their new gear how to do crowd control. I experienced racism and hatred from the local population in town. I witnessed how some people infiltrated the camp and tried to cause destruction from within the movement. They were largely unsuccessful because of the people´s spirit. This was a sacred space. I talked to the spirits one freezing night. It was those spirits that I called on for help last year while I was being held against my will in the COVID-19 ward in the hospital. Yes, after traveling to such a sacred place you experience the power of the spirits.
In 2017, I left the U.S. and moved to Costa Rica. The history is very different here. They do not have an army. I wish everyone a holiday season when they remember the spirits and their ancestors and fight to maintain their freedoms and way of life. A way of life that is non-destructive of the environment and other people. These are dangerous times.
One in six children in California’s Central Valley have asthma. It’s a clear environmental injustice, one that our sister program, Let’s Green CA!, is working hard to correct. Now, they’re on the doorstep of a big win.
Earlier this year, Let’s Green CA! partnered with legendary activist Dolores Huerta and her foundation to reduce toxic air pollution and cut greenhouse gas emissions by increasing access to clean cars. And the great news is that their clean car equity bill, SB 1230, just passed the California State Assembly; it will soon head to Governor Newsom’s desk for his signature. Today, I invite you to take a look at Let’s Green CA’s new video, which examines the human impact of toxic air pollution in California’s Central Valley, then send a message to Gov. Newsom in support of SB 1230. Newsom’s signature is the last step on SB 1230’s journey to becoming law, so it’s time to rally together and get this done!
Click the image to watch LGCA’s new video (featuring the one and only Dolores Huerta) and take action for clean air.
Toxic air pollution is making children and families sick, and the climate crisis only exacerbates this injustice. The Let’s Green CA! team understands that climate action is one of the best ways we can protect frontline communities — and all communities. So I encourage you to send your message to the governor and stand in solidarity in this fight for environmental justice today.
Wopila — my thanks for your awareness and action.
DeCora Hawk
Field Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project
P.S. I’m proud of my colleagues at Let’s Green CA! Help push their bill across the finish line by urging Governor Newsom to sign SB 1230 into law today.
We remain 100 percent focused on our ongoing fight to end the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), despite the turmoil in the world around us. As you’ll see in a new video we co-produced with Standing Rock, a strong coalition among South Dakota’s tribal nations has formed to get it done.
Watch on Standing Rock’s Vimeo page: Standing Rock Chair Janet Alkire is joined by leaders from across the Oceti Sakowin to coordinate the current #NoDAPL strategy.
In the video, you’ll hear from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Kevin Killer, and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier. It’s the first in a planned series that will delve more deeply into the complex issues faced by the tribes in their fight to stop DAPL — a pipeline which continues to operate without a permit for its crossing under Lake Oahe just north of the Standing Rock Nation.
Chairwoman Alkire has been actively relaying tribal concerns directly to Michael Connor, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. She recently returned from a meeting with him, in which she discussed the lack of transparency concerning DAPL’s oil spill response plan for the Missouri River and the terrible safety track record of its parent company, Energy Transfer. As detailed in a press release from the tribe, over a recent 8-year period, nine pipelines owned and controlled by Energy Transfer and its affiliated companies experienced nearly 300 spills — including 50 large ones in vulnerable areas like Lake Oahe.
Until this pipeline has a valid Environmental Impact Statement and federal permit, it is operating in violation of the laws designed to safeguard our people, our delicate water systems, and our sacred homelands. We must keep the pressure on U.S. leaders to do the right thing and shut DAPL down. Please watch our video, stay tuned for the next chapters, and be ready when the time comes to take action together.
Wopila tanka — thank you for standing with Standing Rock and the entire Oceti Sakowin!
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project
547 South 7th Street #149
Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
In 2016 and ‘17, when tens of thousands of people showed up at Standing Rock to protest the Dakota Access pipeline, our rallying cry was “mni wiconi” — water is life. Many of us hail from river tribes, and this saying isn’t just some trite slogan for us; it is our reality as Lakota People. We’re all connected by our ties as human beings, just as water systems are connected above and underground. That’s why, in February — in the same spirit as NoDAPL — representatives from many Great Plains tribes gathered together to bring one voice to the halls of power in South Dakota in support of SB 181.
This legislation, proposed by Lakota State Senator Red Dawn Foster, would require our Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources to assemble a task force to study the adoption of a comprehensive and sustainable watershed ecosystems management approach. Please watch our new video, a co-production by Lakota Law and Uniting Resilience, the nonprofit I run with my partner, Felipa De Leon. It depicts highlights from our presentations and the real impression we made on the senators.
Watch: Lakota Law’s Chase Iron Eyes joined a host of Lakota leaders in addressing the SD State Senate about the importance of SB 181.
The day was a victory, though the legislation didn’t pass this go-round. The senators listened closely and showed real appreciation for our dedication to achieving environmental justice through legislative channels. Tamar Stands And Looks Back made a presentation in Lakota; Chief John Spotted Tail impressed with his words and ceremonial headdress; Lakota Law’s Madonna Thunder Hawk and Chase Iron Eyes made key points that shook the room; and we also heard from the new Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman, Janet Alkire, and many others. In the end, senators from both parties spoke in favor of Red Dawn’s legislation and encouraged us to come back with the bill next session.
That’s exactly what we’ll do. We’re ready to show the power of tribal unity until the bill passes. This legislation is important, because the groundwater and aquifers that connect Lakota Country must be protected. As a study I did in cooperation with Lakota Law shows, the long history of uranium mining throughout South Dakota means our people often rely on toxic water. That’s not acceptable, and we will change it. I invite you to stay connected with us. Only by working and showing up together can we make the right impressions, overcome historical barriers, and improve the health and safety of our communities.
Wopila tanka — thank you for helping us protect our homelands and water!
Monique “Muffie” Mousseau
Via the Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project
547 South 7th Street #149
Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Carina Dominguez
Indian Country Today
NDN Collective released a damning climate justice report Tuesday on the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, the same day as World Water Day.
In a detailed analysis, the Climate Justice Campaign calls on the Biden administration to drain and shut down the pipeline, which the roughly 200-page report argues would protect the nation’s longest river, the Missouri River, and its basin. The report is drawn from court documents, treaties, government documents, news stories, congressional hearings and more.
The purpose of the “Faulty Infrastructure and the Impacts of the North Dakota Access Pipeline” report is to inform and engage industry decision makers, policy makers and the public on the facts and nuances around three major areas:
“The vision of this report is to hold accountable these agencies to their own regulations, to their own laws, to their own climate agendas, but also to support our communities in understanding the regulatory processes and the laws so that we can push against them, or hold these agency accountable to their own laws,” said NDN Collective’s Climate Justice Campaign Director Jade Begay, Diné. Begay also sits on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Begay noted how the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe opted out as a cooperating agency in the environmental review process. This happened after the tribe was repeatedly denied access to information, which the report details.
The tribal nation didn’t immediately respond to Indian Country Today’s attempts for a comment.
Related stories:
— Judge refuses to delay release of DAPL documents
— Enbridge Line 3 divides Indigenous lands, people
— A spiritual perspective on climate change— Indigenous youth rally against pipelines in DC
NDN Collective Climate Justice Organizer Kailea Frederick, Tahltan and Kaska, said draining and shutting down the pipeline would send a clear message to its operator, Energy Transfer, and other companies like it: It’s not okay to violate treaties or environmental protection laws. People, water and the land must be respected, Frederick said.
“The current routing of the Dakota Access Pipeline is a blatant suppression of treaty rights and free, prior and informed consent,” Frederick said.
A recent U.N. report states climate change is already “causing widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world” and calls for urgent action to adapt to climate change and to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
(Related: UN report: Climate change is already major disruption)
“It is actually a conversation on life and death,” Frederick said. “The other voices in the room that continue to try to dominate the conversation are trying to give an illusion that we have more options and more time than we do. And the reality of climate change is that we actually have very few options and we have very limited time to get it right.”
There’s been years of community resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline and recently the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe claimed a legal victory in the case.
Indigenous water protectors and allies blocked the pipeline for months starting in 2016 and were met with violence.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued Energy Transfer over National Environmental Policy Act violations. A district court judge ruled a new Environmental Impact Statement would be required by the company. The Supreme Court denied Energy Transfer’s bid to thwart environmental oversight.
The new environmental impact statement is due in September and a public comment period will open up after that.
NDN Collective will issue a call to action at that time and help the public navigate the public comment requirements because comments must meet strict guidelines that specifically deal with the underwater pipeline crossing on Lake Oahe.
But the possibility of shutting down the pipeline entirely is left up to the executive branch and the Biden administration has so far refused to do so.
Begay questions if the policies and proposals in the Build Back Better Plan and the Green New Deal will be enough to help with a needed paradigm shift.
“The paradigm shift of not consuming as much, staying home more, being more localized, valuing getting around and living our lives without fossil fuels – and plastics,” Begay said.
Frederick said “we don’t have a choice at this moment in time other than to think about how we’re going to live our lives differently and how we’re going to descale.”
NDN Collective releases Dakota Access Pipeline report on World Water Day. The organization worked on the report for over a year. It offers the most thorough, and critical, analysis of the DAPL project yet. (Courtesy of NDN Collective)
“Indigenous peoples need to see the government acting in good faith and so one action towards that is taking action around DAPL and reducing the flow and eventually abandoning the pipeline. That’s our demand,” Begay said.
The NDN Collective report took more than a year to develop in “consultation with an array of skilled and respected industry Indigenous and non-Indigenous specialists who also possess intimate knowledge of the DAPL.”
“It feels like a very big responsibility to get it right, on many different levels,” Frederick said.
The environmental impact statement requires the public’s participation to determine its contents but the report found that didn’t happen with the DAPL project.
“Previously, through the EIS process, there was a time that they would sit down with tribes and strategize together and this process was called scoping. And with the DAPL process, this did not happen,” Frederick said.
The report is critical of how the Army Corps of Engineers has carried out “flawed” processes.
“The way that the entirety of the DAPL process has gone even just now that this pipeline is operating illegally without the right permitting, it really sets the precedent for the other future types of projects,” Frederick said. “If this specific issue around DAPL is not corrected and if this pipeline is not drained and shut down, that it lets other agencies know or companies know that it’s okay to operate in this way with our people on our lands. And the truth is that it’s not okay. And that it is a true violation of treaties.”
The report states the Army Corps lacks “transparency by continuing to withhold critical technical information requested repeatedly by the Tribes while hiding under the guise of “national security”.
One of the major concerns listed in the report is an “independent third-party.” A contractor that is meant to be neutral in the environmental review process has blatant financial ties to the oil and gas industry through membership in the American Petroleum Institute, according to the report.
The report calls for transparency and diligent assessments on the impact of the DAPL project.
Five key elements are:
1. Challenge the legitimacy of the DAPL on Indian land – Treaty Rights
2. Approval of DAPL continues as modern-day dispossession of Indigenous people
3. Army Corps and the Trump era NEPA
4. Major DAPL routing, engineering, spill risk, and safety issues
5. Failure to adequately address environmental justice
“We feel really grateful that our campaign has been able to steward this report coming out into the world,” Frederick said.
She’s looking forward to seeing how tribes and other organizations utilize the material compiled in the report.
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Toward the end of last year, I told you about Gidimt’en Checkpoint — which has rapidly become something akin to a Canadian Standing Rock. Right now, the Wet’suwet’en People are standing strong to protect their yintah, or homelands, and the planet we all share from the Coastal GasLink pipeline. But, just as happened with our own movement against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016-’17, the fossil fuel industry — backed by big banks, the colonial government, and militarized law enforcement — is ignoring their sovereign rights and violently attempting to stamp out Indigenous-led resistance.
That’s why it’s absolutely critical that we do all we can to support the Wet’suwet’en People right now, before this pipeline can further desecrate their yintah. Please email the United Nations: tell them to end human rights abuses on Wet’suwet’en land, and demand that First Nations’ hereditary right to that land be respected. Let the UN know the world is watching.
Read more about the Wet’suwet’en struggle and take action here.
After setting up their Gidimt’en Checkpoint blockade, the Wet’suwet’en People have been subject to violent raids by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including the use of sniper rifles and police dogs. 30 people have been arrested, including two elders. In one incident, a chainsaw and axes were used to break into homes and arrest movement leaders, journalists, and legal observers. One CBC TV journalist was jailed for three days, and the home he was removed from was subsequently burned to the ground.
I’ve also authored a blog detailing some of the history of the Wet’suwet’en struggle for justice. Notably, this pipeline crosses unceded lands under the care of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs for time immemorial. Their free and prior and informed consent should be the first requirement before any project threatening their sacred headwaters, Wedzin Kwa, can move forward. Their consent has not been given, and their title to the land has been upheld by Canada’s Supreme Court.
The violence against Wet’suwet’en land protectors must end and their yintah protected. It’s long past time to stop treating Indigenous People protecting their homelands and Unci Maka — our Grandmother Earth — like terrorists and start listening to our calls for environmental justice.
Wopila tanka — thank you for standing strong with the Wet’suwet’en!
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project
Mary Annette Pember
Indian Country Today
ANISHINAABE LANDS — Line 3 is dead. Long live Line 93.
Enbridge’s controversial Line 3 construction project is complete.
“The Line 3 replacement project/Line 93 came into service on Friday, October 1, as expected through N(orth) Dakota and Minnesota,” Juli Kellner, communications specialist for Enbridge, said in an email to Indian Country Today.
And with that, Line 3 will be deactivated, according to Kellner.
After nearly 8 years of Indigenous and citizen opposition that saw numerous protests and arrests in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and a string of state, federal and tribal court filings, it appears that the corporate giant has won.
Not so, say Indigenous and non-Native water protectors.
As clean-up begins and more construction accidents come to light, water protectors are claiming victory on a number of fronts.
Members of Indigenous advocacy organizations such as Honor the Earth and the Indigenous Environmental Network as well as tribal grassroots pipeline opponents say that the fight against Line 3 helped focus the world’s attention on what they describe as an untenable corporate push to build fossil fuel infrastructure projects at the expense of the environment.
“Line 3 is a crime against the environment and Indigenous rights, waters and lands and it marks the end of the tar sands era — but not the resistance to it,” said Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth.
LaDuke, a citizen of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation, praised the actions of water protectors opposing the pipeline.
“Your brave efforts have reshaped the world’s views on the climate crisis that we are in,” she said.
Signs near the Firelight water protector camp along country Highway 2 near Bagley, Minnesota, on Oct. 4, 2021. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/Indian Country Today)
On Oct. 11, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, activists kicked off a week of protests calling out President Joe Biden for failing to stop Line 3, and for failing to meet his promises on addressing climate change and protecting Indigenous treaty rights and lands. On Oct. 14, dozens of Indigenous leaders held a sit-in at the Interior Department in Washington, D.C., in an effort to stop extractive fossil fuel industry projects such as Line 3.
The Indigenous Environmental Network issued a statement questioning Enbridge’s rosy outlook on the project.
“Although Enbridge is pushing the message that Line 3 is a done deal and that they followed all the rules and regulations, we can see even at this late date the continuing harm to our lands and waters,” the statement said. “There have been spills, frac-outs and pierced aquifers even to this day.”
Enbridge’s decision to change the name of Line 3 to Line 93 further confirms what water protectors knew all along, said Taysha Martineau, founder of Camp Migizi, a camp for water protectors opposing Line 3.
“We stated from the beginning that this was an entirely new pipeline project,” said Martineau, a citizen of the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe.
Negative fallout
Although Enbridge has repeatedly framed the pipeline construction as a safety-based replacement project for the 32-inch Line 3, Line 93 is 34 inches wide, allowing it to carry tar sands oil that Line 3 could not.
Leaders of the White Earth and Red Lake Bands of Ojibwe and Line 3 opponents insist that the negative fallout from pipeline construction continues.
Frank Bibeau, attorney for and citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, said the pipeline construction exacerbated already low water levels and endangered the health of manoomin or wild rice.
In a unique rights of nature lawsuit filed in White Earth tribal court, tribal citizens accuse the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources of failing to protect the state’s fresh water by allowing Enbridge to pump up to five million gallons of additional water from construction trenches. That case is ongoing.
In January, Enbridge construction crews accidentally pierced an artesian aquifer near Clearbrook, Minnesota, causing the aquifer to lose about 24 million gallons of groundwater. The Department of Natural Resources learned about the accident in June when independent monitors reported seeing water pooling in ditches, according to a report issued by the agency.
“Enbridge began work at the Clearbrook Terminal site in early 2021 but did not follow the construction plans it provided to the DNR,” according to the report.
Enbridge erected a protective boom, shown here on Oct. 4, 2021, around a frac-out of drilling fluid along the Mississippi River near Solway, Minnesota. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/Indian Country Today)
In September, the agency ordered Enbridge to pay $3.32 million in penalties, including $300,000 to pay for loss of groundwater as well as create a restoration plan to stop the groundwater flow within 30 days. The agency is also investigating two additional sites of artesian aquifer breaches by the company, but did not disclose the locations.
The Department of Natural Resources has referred the breaches to the Clearwater County attorney where the company could face criminal charges.
On Oct. 17, the agency reported that Enbridge failed to meet a deadline to clean up the ruptured aquifer near Clearbrook and announced that Enbridge must pay compensation for the additional time it takes to stop the flow of groundwater.
Kellner said the company is working with state and local officials.
“Enbridge is fully cooperating with the Minnesota DNR in correcting uncontrolled groundwater flows at Clearbrook and is working with the DNR as two other locations are being evaluated,” she wrote.
Enbridge tanks sit at the company’s terminal in Superior, Wisconsin, on Oct. 8, 2021, the destination of petroleum products flowing through the newly completed Line 93. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/Indian Country Today)
LaDuke called the company’s failure to meet the deadline alarming.
“If Enbridge can’t meet basic safety requirements, they should not be allowed to operate a pipeline,” she said. “It doesn’t bode well for the future.”
In August, the Minnesota Public Pollution Control Agency reported that Enbridge created 28 spills of drilling mud during the summer. The agency confirmed the spills in response to a letter from Minnesota Democratic Farm Labor Party lawmakers demanding an accurate account of the spills.
“Our friends have reported frac-outs further down from the headwaters of the Mississippi,” Bibeau said.
“We are looking into doing a thermal imaging flight over the pipeline to see where all the damage is because we don’t think the DNR or the Public Pollution Control Agency is actually investigating these locations,” he said.
Earlier this month, Ron Turney of the Indigenous Environmental Network and members of Honor the Earth took Indian Country Today via canoe to an Enbridge frac-out location near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
Turney, a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, has been using a drone camera to monitor the pipeline. The location, near Solway, Minnesota, is not accessible on foot or visible from the road. A large boom surrounded the area where opaque white material appeared to rest on top of the water.
Igniting a movement
On Oct. 2, Honor the Earth sponsored a celebration on Madeline Island in Wisconsin of traditional Ojibwe subsistence food and activities as a means to celebrate water protector victories fighting Line 3.
The event coincided with Treaty Day, a commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of 1854 at the town of LaPointe on Madeline Island. In this treaty, the Ojibwe established reservations in their traditional homelands and retained rights to hunt, fish and gather.
Water protectors gathered at Madeline Island in Wisconsin in October 2021.
4Gallery4 Images
Madeline Island or Mooningwanekaaning, “home of the yellow-breasted flicker,” is considered a sacred place by Ojibwe and the birthplace of the tribe’s traditional religion.
About 150 people gathered to share traditional activities such as butchering sturgeon, parching wild rice, feasting, dancing, singing and playing lacrosse.
“We used to survive on this island,” said Paul DeMain, a citizen of the Ojibwe and Oneida tribes and an Honor the Earth board member who was among those at the celebration. “To me, it’s a productive fortress, a place of healing.”
DeMain said water protectors were bound to lose in the massively unequal fight with a global corporate giant such as Enbridge. Among the victories, however, was that the fight focused the world’s attention on the impact of ongoing reliance on fossil fuel on climate change and the preservation of the Earth.
“We came here to celebrate our victories over the fossil fuel industry, our survival and to heal our trauma of watching our people get arrested, harassed, beaten and hurt,” DeMain said.
“We came here to show we could feast in camaraderie with the rich, poor, Indigenous and non-Indigenous and work on forging a path ahead.”
This article contains material from The Associated Press.
Water is Life 