The Line 3 replacement pipeline proposed by Enbridge Energy cuts straight across northern Minnesota. It deliberately snakes around three Ojibwe reservations before slicing through Fond Du Lac Reservation to reach Duluth, its final destination. I imagine Enbridge saw this proposal as an improvement, since the current pipeline runs through both Fond Du Lac Reservation and Leech Lake Reservation. Enbridge proposed the new pipeline as a replacement to the chronically leaky Line 3, which is roughly 50 years old and running at half capacity due to its structural flaws. The Enbridge website states that the replacement pipeline will “maintain our high safety standards … create fewer disruptions to landowners and the environment, and restore the historical operating capabilities of Line 3.”
Needless to say, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental activists do not agree that the pipeline will be safe or necessary. Opponents of the replacement pipeline cite the obvious threats: climate change and water quality. The new pipeline will continue to transport tar sands oil from Canada to Duluth, where the crude oil will be processed into fuel. With the replacement, Enbridge is planning to increase the diameter of the pipeline from 34 inches to 36 inches, doubling the pipe’s carrying capacity to a total of 790,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day. The project’s environmental impact statement says the oil flowing through the pipeline would add 193 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year:the equivalent of a dozen of the country’s largest coal-fired power plants’ annual emissions.
Furthermore, some activists argue that the phrase “replacement pipeline” is not even an accurate way to describe the project. Enbridge has proposed an entirely different route for the portion of Line 3 that runs through Minnesota. So, rather than replacing the existing pipeline, Enbridge will just be burying a new, larger pipeline and leaving the old one to rot under the earth.
Activists have battled against the pipeline for years, along with non-profits, tribal governments, and even the state government. Enbridge officially proposed their new pipeline to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in 2015. Since then, the PUC’s approval of the pipeline proposal has been appealed by the Minnesota Department of Commerce three times, citing Enbridge’s failure to prove that there is sufficient demand for tar sands oil to justify its construction.
Tribal governments and environmental groups have filed numerous motions over the years, with some success in temporarily blocking the pipeline. Most recently, on Dec. 24, 2020, a federal appeal was entered by Honor the Earth, Sierra Club, and White Earth and Red Lake Nations, arguing that the permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not properly evaluate the environmental impact of the pipeline.
Based on the performance of the existing Line 3 pipeline, activists have a right to be concerned. Since the original Line 3 pipeline was put into service in 1968, there has pretty much been an oil spill to mark each decade of its operation.
In 1979, 449,000 gallons of crude oil spilled near Bemidji, Minn. Twelve years later, in what was then the largest inland oil spill in United States history, mistakes made by Enbridge workers resulted in a 1.7 million gallon spill near Grand Rapids, Minn. (Interestingly enough, Enbridge is also responsible for the largest oil spill into an inland waterway in the U.S. In 2010, Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline poured more than 1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.) After the incident in Grand Rapids, Line 3 continued to wreak havoc on northern Minnesota. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a quarter-million gallons of oil “caused injury” to wetlands near Cohasset, Minn. in 2002. Before Enbridge’s decision to reduce the capacity of its infamous Line 3, the pipeline exploded in the late fall of 2007, killing two people and igniting a fire that burned through the night. Enbridge officially had blood on their hands.
Due to the damage Line 3 has done in the past and because of the link between producing and utilizing tar sands oil and climate change, both Indigenous activists and other environmental activists see this pipeline as yet another existential threat to the health of the planet. However, for Ojibwe activists, the approval of this pipeline is also linked to the destruction of their ancestral homelands.
“I live from this land. Indakiingimin. This is the land to which I belong,” says Winona LaDuke in the federal appeal issued Dec. 24. LaDuke is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation and the executive director of Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led organization that advocates for issues of environmental justice. “The waters, or Midewaaboo, of our territory—including the waters of lakes, rivers, and underground springs—are full of manitoowag, or spirits, with whom we reaffirm our relationship through ceremony throughout the year.”
Ojibwe are deeply connected to the water. In their migration story, it is said they came to the Midwest from the Eastern seaboard. They were following a prophecy that told them to travel until they found a place where food grew on water. Their traditional lifeways are tied to the water. Thus, for many Ojibwe, the battle over Line 3 becomes existential.
Ojibwe have been traveling by canoe across the Midwest for centuries, even braving the massive, ocean-like Lake Superior in handcarved, birch bark canoes. They’ve harvested traditional foods, such as walleye, cranberries, and wild rice, from the Great Lakes since they began their slow journey westward from the coast around 1,500 years ago.
“I am afraid for my children and grandchildren, and I particularly fear that the gifts from the Creator are being put into extreme risk and danger by this pipeline,” says LaDuke. “Water and oil do not coexist, and this territory is the land of life and spirits.”
Because of their ancient connection to this land, many Ojibwe conceptualize their relationship to it differently than colonizers do. I spoke to Frank Bibeau, an Ojibwe attorney for White Earth Nation and Honor the Earth, this past summer. As an attorney, some of his biggest legal battles in recent years have been over oil pipelines in northern Minnesota. First was Sandpiper, Enbridge Energy’s proposal to help North Dakota move crude oil by pipeline to Wisconsin. Now, Line 3. Over the years, these extensive legal fights have made Bibeau skeptical of some of the state agencies’ motives.
“What you see is the state … trying to get to the minimum standard possible, not the maximum level to protect the environment,” Bibeau says. “Their report says there’s not a good place [to put Line 3] that won’t damage wild rice. So, they’re just saying, ‘Well, whatever, put it anywhere because there’s no good spot.’”
Bibeau sees this logic as faulty. “To us, it’s like, this isn’t a good spot, so you shouldn’t put it anywhere because it’ll harm the resources,” Bibeau says, “When you talk about culture clash … if there isn’t a good spot, they’ll just do it.”
Bibeau knows that there are non-Native people who care about the health of Minnesota’s waterways, but he thinks that, for Ojibwe, the fight is different.
“Nobody wants it goofed up. But they’ll move away,” Bibeau said, of non-Native Minnesotans. “We can’t move away. And so we have to be even more respectful of the land and the water because our reservation is where our reservation is.”
Line 3 is the latest installment in one of the oldest American battles. It is the showdown between the government and those it purports to represent, the clash between a bottomless desire for capital and a need to preserve the lands and waters we rely on.
“It’s the historical way colonization operates. They presume what they’re doing is enough and everyone should accept that as sufficient and go with whatever the fallout is,” Bibeau said. “It’s the same practice as yesterday. It’s what they did the day before and the day before that.”
Recently, public opinion has shifted somewhat, and it’s become more difficult for companies like Enbridge to continue to do what they did yesterday. Non-Native environmental activists have been diving into fights against pipelines with increasing vigor in the past decade. They, too, see the threat pipelines pose to the lands and waters they cherish.
But the non-Native environmental activists fighting Line 3 are not here to rescue Ojibwe. In fact, they couldn’t win this fight without Ojibwe. And the biggest reason why has to do with the rights Ojibwe reserved in treaties with the U.S. government hundreds of years ago.
Ojibwe were brought to the treaty table for the first time in 1837, where they ceded a swath of land in what is now central-eastern Minnesota to the United States. Over the next 20 years, they were called to negotiate over their homelands three more times, which shaped the landscape of Minnesota today. These deals were not fair, and the U.S. government largely swindled Ojibwe out of their original homelands. However, Ojibwe did come away with something important: treaty rights.
In perhaps the most consequential sentence for modern Ojibwe sovereignty and tribal law, the 1837 treaty states, “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, during the pleasure of the President of the United States.”
In other words, although Ojibwe ceded most of their territory to the U.S. government, they fought for and won the right to keep practicing their traditional lifeways in that area. Today, after the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have given Line 3 the green light, treaty rights are all that’s left. Preserving their right to hunt, fish, and gather is the argument tribal lawyers are using to dismantle Line 3.
“[Non-Native people] don’t have a mechanism in their own government to protect them. I’m in a position where I can protect both Indians’ and non-Indians’ way of life and resources,” said Bibeau. “The Indians themselves and our rights and laws might be the things that protect [the water], not the structure they’ve built to oppress us.”
Tribal law, Indigenous ways of knowing: these are the safeguards left after state agencies and local governments bow their heads to corporations. And, hopefully, the federal government will honor these safeguards this time around as they consider the Dec. 24 appeal.
Enbridge, however, won’t be waiting until then. On Dec. 7, ground broke on the Line 3 replacement pipeline, despite pending legal challenges. Since then, both Native and non-Native activists have been camped out in northern Minnesota, literally standing in Enbridge’s path, attempting to halt the pipeline until Red Lake Nation, White Earth Nation, Sierra Club, and Honor the Earth get a chance to combat Line 3 in federal court. Supporters of the pipeline see the start of construction as a much-needed jumpstart to the local economies and an opportunity to bring paychecks home to over 4,000 workers in a time of economic troubles. The pipeline’s opponents, of course, are devastated.
When I talked to Frank Bibeau this summer, long before the final permits were granted and the bulldozers began plowing through the northwoods, he seemed grim. Bibeau saw the Line 3 replacement pipeline as just the beginning for northern Minnesota.
“My primary concern is the same thing we’re talking about, just exponentially. When, all of a sudden, [sea level] does come up, those people don’t have a place to live. Then, they want to check the list,” said Bibeau, “Who has fresh water and something to eat? Looks like northern Minnesota, where all the fish and game and lakes and rivers are. And so, I think we’re just a target waiting to be overrun.”
For daily updates on the frontline protests, follow @honortheearth on social media. If you’re looking to learn more about how you can get involved, check out honortheearth.org or stopline3.org. And, as always, if you can, please consider donating to their cause.