Over the past three weeks Line 3 resistance has continued in Minnesota and around the country.
Since our last weekly recap…
The harm Line 3 has already caused Minnesota’s land and waters became more clear…
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced that it had ordered Enbridge Energy to pay $3.32 million for breaching an aquifer during construction last winter. Their failure to follow environmental laws on that occasion resulted in millions of gallons of groundwater flowing out of the aquifer, posing a risk to rare wetlands nearby. Watch a statement from Winona LaDuke about the incident here.
The extent of damage at the Headwaters of the Mississippi River from spills of drilling mud during construction, often called “frac outs” is still being uncovered. Recent photos and videos by an independent media maker show significant devastation across the sensitive wetland ecosystem.
Financial institutions faced mounting pressure to defund Line 3 and similar projects
The world’s largest industrial insurance company, Chubb, announced that it would no longer insure tar sands infrastructure projects like Line 3. Chubb is the latest in a series of insurance companies that have revoked their funding in response to climate justice activism against the Trans Mountain Pipeline. As a result of the shrinking pool of companies willing to insure these projects, Enbridge has reported concerns about their ability to acquire the requisite coverage for Line 3 in the future.
Taysha Martineau, an Anishinaabe two-spirit leader with the movement to stop Line 3 declined the 30 Under 30 Climate Activist Award from NYC Climate Week, calling out the event’s sponsorship by Wells Fargo and Bank of America. In a statement she said, “I must humbly decline any award as both these banks fund the very pipeline that is harming my people.” Watch an interview with Taysha about her decision here.
Resistance continued on the frontlines
Water protectors with Camp Migizi have been using boats to halt work at Line 3 hydrostatic testing facilities. Watch footage of this tactic in action earlier this month.
In response to the news that Enbridge breached an aquifer, causing significant harm to surrounding wetland ecosystems, Winona LaDuke led the 8th annual Horse “Ride Against the Current of Oil” to the site of that incident to pray for the water. (Photos here)
Local and national elected officials continued to call on President Biden to Stop Line 3
Established in 1990, The Indigenous Environmental Network is an international environmental justice nonprofit that works with tribal grassroots organizations to build the capacity of Indigenous communities. I EN’s activities include empowering Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, the health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
Editor’s note: Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities. Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
Derrick Jensen (2006): Endgame vol. 1, p. IX
SMITHERS, BC: On the morning of September 25, 2021, the access road to Coastal GasLink’s (CGL’s) drill site at the Wedzin Kwa river was destroyed. Blockades have been set up and sites have been occupied, to stop the drilling under the sacred headwaters that nourish the Wet’suwet’en Yintah and all those within its catchment area. Cas Yikh and supporters have gained control of the area and refuse to allow this destruction to continue.
Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs were denied access to their own lands, and there has been one arrest confirmed. The Hereditary Chiefs were read the injunction and threatened with arrest, but they held their ground. Despite heavy machinery and heavy RCMP presence, our relatives and supporters are standing strong holding the line, and so far no more arrests have been confirmed. As of Sunday, September 26, the individual arrested has been released and the chiefs and supporters continue to hold the line and successfully hold off any work by CGL.
Days ago, CGL destroyed our ancient village site, Ts’elkay Kwe. When Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ attempted to monitor the CGL archaeological team and contest the destruction of Wet’suwet’en cultural heritage, she was aggressively intimidated by CGL security guards. Tensions have continued to rise on the Yintah as CGL pushes a reckless and destructive construction schedule with the support of private security and the RCMP.
Now, CGL is ready to begin drilling beneath our sacred headwaters, Wedzin Kwa. We know that this would be disastrous, not only for Wet’suwet’en people, but for all living beings supported by the Wedzin Kwa, and for the communities living downstream. Wedzin Kwa is a spawning ground for salmon and a critical source of pristine drinking water. States Sleydo’, Gidimt’en Checkpoint Spokesperson:
“Our way of life is at risk. […] Wedzin Kwa [is the] the river that feeds all of Wet’suwet’en territory and gives life to our nation.”
Coastal Gaslink has been evicted from our territories by the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs who have full jurisdiction over Wet’suwet’en lands. Coastal GasLink is pushing through a 670-kilometer fracked gas pipeline, but under ‘Anuc niwh’it’en (Wet’suwet’en law) all five clans of the Wet’suwet’en have unanimously opposed all pipeline proposals and have not provided free, prior, and informed consent to Coastal Gaslink to do work on Wet’suwet’en lands.
As Coastal GasLink continues to trespass, we will do everything in our power to protect our waters and to uphold our laws. Gidimt’en Checkpoint has issued a call for support, asking people to travel to Cas Yikh territory to stand with them.
For further information please go to: yintahaccess.com
Media backgrounder here
Photo Credit: Michael Toledano
Media contact:
Jennifer Wickham, Gidimt’en Checkpoint Media Coordinator
Email: Yintahaccess@gmail.com
Phone number: 778-210-0067
Editor’s note: In order for the planet to survive, we must act in its defense. We can not rely on governments or corporations to do it. This is why Deep Green Resistance is organizing actions to confront the power structures—patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and civilization—largely responsible for the plunder of land and people.
This is a story of victory for the earth and of the end of the Keystone XL pipeline. It also involves the Dakota Access pipeline and the Standing Rock Lakota reservation, indeed the entire world, all of which is threatened by our desperate last burst of fossil fuel exploitation. It is a story of what the dogged persistence and creativity of indigenous people and their allies can do against the kind of power we’ve been told is impossible to resist. But it’s a story without a guaranteed ending. The ending depends on us.
In 2004, small indigenous nations living near the Alberta Tar Sands project, the largest unconventional oil extraction effort in the world, began reaching out for help. Not only was the project interfering with their water, fishing, and hunting infrastructure, but rare and unusual cancers were appearing. They contacted policy experts at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, D.C., who met with them in 2005 and saw photographic documentation of the devastation. These experts began to gather data and to raise awareness in the United States, on whose special refineries the project relied. Experts focused on the unique risks posed by tar sands at every stage of production, including extraction, transportation, and refinement. It wasn’t enough, but without the testimony and photographs supplied by indigenous people, experts would not have noticed for some time.
In 2008, approximately two dozen people from indigenous nations and environmental activist groups met to develop an overall strategy. The groups decided that the most promising activist target was the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, proposed by the giant TransCanada (now TC Energy) corporation to move the tar sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Stopping the pipeline would rob the Tar Sands project of financial justification. The unusually expensive techniques required for extracting, transporting, and refining tar sands made them unusable when the global barrel price was low, and any increases in the cost of production would make investors flee.
This small group of people had almost no support. Going up against the Keystone XL pipeline meant taking on the Republican Party, half the Democratic Party, the U.S. government, the Canadian government, and the entire oil industry. But with the presence of indigenous organizers in this group, they soon discovered they had something far more important.
Attendees at the meeting began spreading the word. Clayton Thomas-Muller, a climate activist belonging to the Columb Cree Nation of Manitoba and an attendee, noticed that the pipeline would be running through the Oglala aquifer, a route that, in addition to being an environmental scourge, also threatened indigenous sovereignty. He began using his existing connections from previous anti-pipeline campaigns in indigenous nations to persuade tribal councils to pass resolutions opposing KXL, which they took directly to President Obama in 2011. He continued to work on tribal organizing throughout the effort to stop KXL. By 2010, Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska became aware of the Keystone XL threat. She attended the first State Department hearing on the pipeline in York, Nebraska in May out of curiosity without even knowing what tar sands were. At the hearing, she noticed that over 100 farmers and ranchers spoke out individually against the pipeline project and the only person speaking for it represented a union of construction workers on the pipeline. Kleeb thought the pipeline could be stopped if she could persuade Nebraska’s increasingly resistant farmers and ranchers to join indigenous people and environmentalists. To do this, she relied on indigenous support, including Muller’s. As a result, 150 tribes from the United States and Canada met in her state to sign an agreement opposing pipeline construction. The indigenous people she worked with also gave her good organizing and spiritual advice. First, stay rooted in real, concrete stories, not abstract principles. Second, never give up. The latter was remarkable guidance, especially coming from people who have endured what indigenous people in North America have endured.
The pipeline rose to national awareness in 2011, when former NASA climate scientist James Hansen wrote an essay arguing that it would be “game over for the climate” if the Alberta tar sands were fully developed. After this, 350.org got involved. They arranged for scores of celebrities to engage in civil disobedience in front of the White House. Here in Texas, Cindy Spoon, a graduate student at the University of North Texas, co-founded the Tar Sands Blockade after the White House protests and, following Kleeb’s lead, began organizing local pipeline resistance in communities along the Texas portion of the planned route. The Tar Sands Blockade, and the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance that grew out of it, used bold, theatrical, and courageous tactics to block construction of the pipeline. Cindy also followed the guidance Kleeb had received from indigenous people in Nebraska, to stay rooted in stories and never give up. Tar Sands Blockade kept the issue in the news in Texas and Oklahoma, and occasionally in the national news, long after President Obama had already approved construction of the southern half. And we cost TC Energy a lot of money.
Cindy Spoon personally recruited a friend of mine and fellow activist for an arrest-risking direct action effort. I attended a training camp she organized and eventually got myself arrested at a KXL pumping station under construction in Seminole County, Oklahoma. Indigenous people were crucial agents in this experience. I and my colleague were thrown into what turned out to be the “Indian tank” at the county jail. The local Seminole men in jail with us that day were neither surprised to hear about the utterly unprincipled way power works in the United States, nor surprised to find us to be relatively naïve about it. But the men who spoke most freely with us also insisted on another kind of power. One guy wanted to form a circle and have each of us read something from the Bible that meant something to us and explain what it meant. During one of his turns, he quoted a verse from Matthew 19 about all things being possible with God. He looked at us and said, “this means you keep going, no matter what.” Stay rooted in real stories, and never give up.
For years after the intense efforts of 2011 and 2012, the fight against the KXL remained precarious. President Obama temporarily delayed it, but Trump attempted to accelerate it. Indigenous groups continued to resist, leading efforts against the northern half of the pipeline. And then indigenous people broadened the fight, linking it to the Dakota Pipeline resistance on the Standing Rock reservation, where the effort took on a more explicit indigenous spiritual context. In the morning, Lakota women walked to Cannonball River for a water ceremony. At dawn, local people chanted in the Lakota language. At night, Lakota elders tended a sacred fire, saying “Water is life. Defend the sacred.” In December 2016, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe and Bundle, visited the camp where his son was a leader. Reminding those present of the millions of attacks on the integrity of the earth community, he insisted that power lies in the common indigenous commitment to the sacredness of the physical world. He gave the same guidance Jane Kleeb had received from indigenous activists. Our struggle, he said, must be tireless and “prayer-filled,” rooted in stories drawn from experience, and we must never give up. He reassured them they would be victorious because, though people may believe this isn’t their fight, “Standing Rock is everywhere.” This sentence was, I have heard from friends who were present, the missing piece of the puzzle, exposing the unreality of indifference. Yes. It is everywhere. Nowhere on earth is safe from this threat, and we are all in the midst of it.
In January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order revoking the permit for the last phase of the KXL pipeline. By this time, investors had already been fleeing. The efforts of Clayton Thomas-Muller, Jane Kleeb, Cindy Spoon and indigenous activists across the pipeline route were bearing fruit. On June 9, TC Energy (TransCanada) abandoned the project. With the Keystone XL dead, the Alberta Tar Sands is likely to follow.
The Dakota Access pipeline, however, remains active. The sacred water on which the people of Standing Rock depend remains threatened. We can celebrate a genuine victory with the end of the KXL and it is appropriate to be grateful for the indigenous guidance responsible for this victory. Nevertheless, the struggle continues and it is our struggle, not just someone else’s. We may be afraid to feel ourselves in the midst of it, but we are. The guidance remains true:
Stay rooted in real stories. Never give up. Standing Rock is everywhere.
Editor’s note: “That repair should be the main goal of the environmental movement. Unlike the Neverland of the Tilters’ solutions, we have the technology for prairie and forest restoration, and we know how to use it. And the grasses will be happy to do most of the work for us.” “To actively repair the planet requires understanding the damage. The necessary repair—the return of forests, prairies, and wetlands—could happen over a reasonable fifty to one hundred years if we were to voluntarily reduce our numbers.” Deep Green Resistance
The Eurasian beaver, once a common sight across Europe, had disappeared almost entirely by the end of the 16th century thanks to hunting and river modification for agriculture and engineering.
But beavers are making a comeback across the UK and several other countries. They have already been released into the wild in Scotland and within enclosed river sections in England. Now expanding the wild release of beavers across England is on the cards.
Ecosystem recovery, increased biodiversity, flood protection and improved water quality are some of the upsides of having beavers around. But reintroducing wild animals to the landscape is always going to involve trial and error, and it’s vital to understand the possible consequences – both good and bad.
The beaver is a gifted environmental engineer, able to create its own ecological niche – matching itself perfectly to its environment – by building dams. These dams are made from materials the beaver can carry or float – typically wood, stones and mud, but also fence posts, crops from nearby fields, satellite dishes and old kids’ toys.
The dam creates a peaceful, watery home for beaver families to sleep, eat and avoid predators. And the effects of dam building ripple outwards, with the potential to transform entire ecosystems.
Our review of beaver impacts considers evidence from across Europe and North America, where wild beaver populations have been expanding since around the 1950s.
Our review of beaver impacts considers evidence from across Europe and North America, where wild beaver populations have been expanding since around the 1950s.
Water
There is clear evidence that beaver dams increase water storage in river landscapes through creating more ponds and wetlands, as well as raising groundwater levels. This could help rivers – and their inhabitants – handle ever more common weather extremes like floods and droughts.
If you observe beaver dams in the wild, water often comes very close to the top of their dams, suggesting they might not be much help in a flood. Nonetheless, some studies are finding that beaver dams can reduce flood peaks, likely because they divert water onto floodplains and slow downstream flow. However, we don’t know whether beaver dams reliably reduce floods of different sizes, and it would be unwise to assume they’re always capable of protecting downstream structures.
The good news is that it seems all the extra water dams store could help supplement rivers during dry periods and act as critical refuges for fish, amphibians, insects and birds during droughts.
Pollution
Beaver dams increase the time it takes for things carried by rivers to move downstream. In some cases, this can help slow the spread of pollutants like nitrates and phosphates, commonly used in fertilisers, which can harm fish and damage water quality.
Beavers’ impact on phosphates is unclear, with just as many studies finding phosphorus concentrations increasing downstream of beaver dams as those finding a decrease or no change. But beavers seem especially skilled at removing nitrate: a welcome skill, since high concentrations of nitrates in drinking water could endanger infant health.
Recovering diversity
All that water storage means beavers create a wonderful mosaic of still-, slow- and fast-moving watery habitats. In particular, they increase the biodiversity of river valleys, for example helping macro-invertebrates like worms and snails – key to healthy food chains – to thrive.
But nuance is key here. Evidence of beaver dam impacts on fish populations and river valley vegetation, for example, is very mixed. Because they are such great agents of disturbance, beavers promote plants that germinate quickly, like woody shrubs and grasses.
While this can reduce forest cover and help some invasive plants, given time it can also help create valleys with a far richer mosaic of plant life. So although beaver presence is likely to bring benefits, more research is needed to get clearer on precisely how beavers change ecosystems.
Net zero carbon
Beavers are great at trapping carbon by storing organic matter like plant detritus in slow-flowing ponds. However, this also means beaver ponds can be sources of greenhouse gases, like CO₂ and methane, that contribute to the greenhouse effect. This led one author to wonder “whether the beaver is aware the greenhouse effect will reduce demand for fur coats”.
Can beavers still be helpful in achieving net zero carbon? The short-term answer is probably yes, since more carbon seems to be trapped than released by beaver activities.
However, long-term outcomes are less clear, since the amount of carbon that beavers keep in the ground depends on how willing they are to hang around in a river valley – and how willing we are to let them. A clearer understanding of where beavers fit within the carbon cycle of river systems is needed if we are to make best use of their carbon capture skills.
Management
Beavers are reentering landscapes under human dominance, the same thing that originally drove them from vast swathes of European river systems.
In the UK, this means they’ll lack natural predators and may be in competition with cows and sheep for food: possibly resulting in unsteady wild population trajectories.
Although good data on long-term beaver activity is available from Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, our different climate and landscapes mean it’s hard to make a straightforward comparison.
Beavers’ use in rewilding can be incredibly cost-effective, as dam construction and the biodiversity benefits that flow from it is done largely for free. But we need to be tolerant of uncertainty in where and when they choose to do their work.
Working with wild animals – who probably don’t share our priorities – is always an unpredictable process. The expansion of beavers into the wild has a bright future so long as we can manage expectations of people who own and use beaver-inhabited land.
“Finally, our fields are made safer for farmworkers and our fruits and vegetables are safer for our children.”
“However, there is no excuse for manufacturing these substances, let alone deliberately releasing them into the environment.” Max Wilbert
By Jessica Corbett
Public health experts and labor rights advocates celebrated Wednesday after the Biden administration announced that it “will stop the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on all food to better protect human health, particularly that of children and farmworkers,” following decades of demands for government intervention spurred by safety concerns.
“Years of backtracking put the health of countless children and farmworkers at risk by negligently and intentionally overlooking the harms of a terrible pesticide.”
—Anne Katten, CRLA Foundation
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final rule on chlorpyrifos days before a court-ordered deadline stemming from legal action by advocacy groups that have long sought a ban on the pesticide, which is tied to permanent brain damage in children.
“We welcome EPA’s long overdue decision to cancel this neurotoxic insecticide,” said Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, in a statement. “Since farmworkers, pregnant people, and young children are especially vulnerable to harm from exposure to chlorpyrifos, a cancellation of this dangerous product was the only choice.”
Pesticide Action Network executive director Kristin Schafer said that the agency “has released a plan that aligns with what scientists have known for decades: Chlorpyrifos is much too dangerous to be using, and its continued use has put children, farmworkers, and rural communities at risk.”
Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, also welcomed the news.
“Today, we celebrate this huge victory alongside the men and women who harvest our food, who have waited too long for a ban on this pesticide,” Romero said. “We are relieved that farmworkers and their families will no longer have to worry about the myriad of ways this pesticide could impact their lives.”
Although fears of the harms to children led the EPA to end household use of chlorpyrifos two decades ago, as a recent report from the public interest law firm Earthjustice showed, the pesticide and other organophosphates are still widely applied to crops across the United States.
In an unusual move, the new chlorpyrifos policy will not be put in place via the standard regulatory process, under which the EPA first publishes a draft rule, then takes public comment before publishing a final rule. Rather, in compliance with the court order, which noted that the science linking chlorpyrifos to brain damage is over a decade old, the rule will be published in final form, without a draft or public comment period.
Michal Freedhoff, the EPA assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, told the Times that the “very unusual” court directive “speaks to the impatience and the frustration that the courts and environmental groups and farmworkers have with the agency.”
“The court basically said, ‘Enough is enough'” Freedhoff said. “Either tell us that it’s safe, and show your work, and if you can’t, then revoke all tolerances.”
In a statement, EPA Administrator Michael Regan recognized frustration with the agency’s inaction—particularly under former President Donald Trump—up until the new rule’s release.
“Today EPA is taking an overdue step to protect public health. Ending the use of chlorpyrifos on food will help to ensure children, farmworkers, and all people are protected from the potentially dangerous consequences of this pesticide,” Regan said. “After the delays and denials of the prior administration, EPA will follow the science and put health and safety first.”
The agency’s statement acknowledged the rule aligns with moves by other policymakers, noting that “a number of other countries, including the European Union and Canada, and some states including California, Hawaii, New York, Maryland, and Oregon have taken similar action to restrict the use of this pesticide on food.”
While applauding the EPA rule, advocates also emphasized decades of delays.
“We are relieved that the EPA has finally put an end to the use of chlorpyrifos. Years of backtracking put the health of countless children and farmworkers at risk by negligently and intentionally overlooking the harms of a terrible pesticide,” said Anne Katten, Pesticide and Work Safety Project director at the CRLA Foundation. “Finally, our fields are made safer for farmworkers and our fruits and vegetables are safer for our children.”
Advocates of outlawing chlorpyrifos also urged the EPA to take action on additional uses of this pesticide as well as other harmful organophosphate pesticides.
Under President Joe Biden, the agency “is finally reversing one of many horrific Trump administration actions that prioritized pesticide industry profits over our health and environment,” said Jason Davidson, senior food and agriculture campaigner with Friends of the Earth. “But the EPA must now finish the job and follow sound science by banning all uses of chlorpyrifos.”
Patti Goldman, the Earthjustice attorney who has been leading the chlorpyrifos litigation, declared that “it took far too long, but children will no longer be eating food tainted with a pesticide that causes intellectual learning disabilities.”
“Chlorpyrifos will finally be out of our fruits and vegetables,” she said. “But chlorpyrifos is just one of dozens of organophosphate pesticides in our fields that can harm children’s development. EPA must ban all organophosphates from food.”
Featured image: On September 7, 2021, Water Protectors erected multiple blockades at a major U.S.-Canadian tar sands terminal in Clearbrook, Minnesota, in direct opposition to Enbridge’s Line 3. Courtesy of the Giniw Collective.
Amid record hurricanes, wildfires and droughts, battles are being waged over the fate of the Earth. Many of those battles are being fought by Indigenous people, and by others whose relationship to life, land and one another compels them to push back against an extractive, death-making economy that renders people and ecosystems disposable. On the front lines of the struggle to halt construction of Enbridge’s new Line 3 pipeline — which would bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wisconsin — Water Protectors have locked themselves to excavators and drills, and overturned cars and barrels of cement, while also deploying aerial blockades, including elaborate tripods and tree-sits. In scattered encampments that run along a 300-mile stretch of pipeline construction, a culture defined by mutual aid, and a spiritual and physical struggle to defend the Earth, has held strong in the face of brutality and an increasingly entrenched alliance between police and the corporate forces fueling climate catastrophe.
I recently spoke with Giniw Collective founder Tara Houska, a citizen of Couchiching First Nation, over a shaky internet connection, as she held space at the collective’s Namewag Camp in Minnesota. The camp, which is led by Indigenous women and two-spirit people, was founded by the Giniw Collective in 2018, as Minnesota’s final permit decision on Line 3 drew near. Houska says she invited Native matriarchs, including LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and Winona LaDuke, among others, to initiate the effort. “We laid out our prayers and our songs to begin this phase,” Houska told me.
Since then, the Namewag Camp, says Houska, has been “a home for many people.” Some people have spent years at the encampment, while others have held space for months, weeks or even a few days. “It really depends on the person or persons that are coming through,” says Houska. The culture of the camp emphasizes direct action, mutual aid and Native traditions. “We’ve trained well over 1000 folks in non-violent direct action, decolonization, traditional knowledge and life in balance,” says Houska. People who call the camp home are committed to stopping the pipeline, but Houska says making a home at Namewag also requires a commitment to mutual aid as a way of life. “I think we’re trying to create a balance, a place that is more reflective of balance, and deep values that are very much needed in the climate movement, and also just generally in the world,” Houska told me, adding that, “the first structure that was built in this camp was actually our sweat lodge.” The encampment also includes a “very large, beautiful garden.”
Houska was not always an activist on the front lines. “I started out as a D.C. lawyer back in 2013, after law school, and worked on a lot of different issues for tribal nations, and saw the treatment of our people on the hill, and through the law,” says Houska. She engaged with legal efforts to thwart the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and efforts to stop the project that would eventually be known as Line 3, but Houska ultimately felt called to fight for the Earth “in a different way.” Houska travelled to Standing Rock in 2016 and “spent six months out there learning and resisting.”
While some Water Protectors involved in the Line 3 protests carry lessons from Standing Rock, the two struggles have manifested differently. The movement in Standing Rock drew an unprecedented assemblage of Natives from over 300 federally recognized tribes, and other Indigenous and non-Indigenous co-strugglers. Thousands of people converged on a cluster of camps, the largest of which was known as Oceti Sakowin. Houska says a variety of nations and groups are also represented in the Line 3 struggle, but rather than being relatively centralized, Line 3 encampments are staggered across 334 miles of pipeline construction. “We also have been fighting this pipeline during a pandemic,” Houska noted, “which means a lot of caution and precaution around COVID-19 and making sure everyone is healthy and safe, and that we’re not putting anyone at risk.”
Line 3 opponents say the pipeline, once fully operational, would be the carbon pollution equivalent of 50 coal-fired power plants. As an editorial that will be published in 200 health journals worldwide this fall, ahead of the UN General Assembly and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, states, “The greatest threat to global public health is the continued failure of world leaders to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5°C and to restore nature.”
The pipeline would also tunnel under 20 rivers, including the Mississippi, threatening the drinking water supply of millions of people. In 2010, 1.2 million gallons of oil spilled from Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline into the Kalamazoo River, in one of 800 oil spills the company experienced between 1999 and 2010.
While regulatory battles and legal maneuvers are crucial in any fight to stop a pipeline, Houska says that land defense, and the “building of a resistance community on the front lines” is an “under-respected, undervalued, but critical component to a healthy movement.” Houska says the work of building that communal effort, and sustaining it, has been “beautiful, hard, sad, [and] sometimes painful.” Houska explained: “Police have been getting pretty brutal in recent weeks. They’ve been shooting ‘less lethals’ at us, and using pain compliance tactics. So torturing people, really engaging in behaviors that are quite shocking, I think. Which means a lot of care, and community is really important for us on the front lines.”
Houska says sustaining the struggle also means making time to acknowledge “the hurt that we’re experiencing in real time” while also naming and uplifting “the reasons we’re engaging in struggle, [which is for] the littles, and those to come, and the four-legged and the winged, and the rivers, and the wild rice.”
Houska also notes that the violence of fossil fuel extraction embodies the longstanding violence of colonialism, with large influxes of transient workers at so-called “man camps” (temporary housing camps of mostly male pipeline construction workers) destroying the life-giving ecosystems that sustain Native communities, while also inflicting violence on Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. For years, Native leaders have sought to raise awareness about the measurable increase in sexual assaults, murders and disappearances of Native women in areas where “man camps” are established. To highlight this threat, Water Protectors hosted by the Giniw Collective’s camp recently staged a blockade action in front of the Line 3 “man camp,” in which an “all-BIPOC group of mostly Indigenous femmes [and] two-spirits” locked themselves to an overturned vehicle, and other equipment.
“Man camps” are the modern embodiment of colonial raiding parties that have historically seized upon Native land, looted Indigenous resources and inflicted sexual violence on Native women. Today, pipeline workers and police inflict the violence of colonialism on Indigenous people, enacting the true character of capitalism for the world to see, while relying on the public’s lack of concern for Native people and the environment as they commit atrocities in plain sight.
Houska says that land defense, and the “building of a resistance community on the front lines” is an “under-respected, undervalued, but critical component to a healthy movement.”
A war is being waged against land and water defenders in the U.S., just as a war is being waged globally against environmental activists, by corporations and world governments, in order to maintain the repetitions of capitalism: extraction, exploitation, destruction, disposal, and the consolidation of wealth and resources. Globally, violence against environmental activists has hit record highs in recent years, with Indigenous people facing disproportionately high rates of murder and brutality for their organizing. Indigenous people make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but steward over 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In some parts of the world, such as Colombia and the Philippines, the assassination of Indigenous activists has become increasingly common. Here in the United States, Indigenous activists have faced escalating violence and criminalization while acting in opposition to pipeline construction and other extraction efforts.
While many people recoil from any discussion of the reality of climate change, catastrophes like Hurricane Ida, and the Dixie and Caldor fires in California, are making the subject harder to avoid. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 climate report, environmental catastrophes will continue to accelerate over the coming decades, but human beings still have something to say about the severity of the damage. Coming to terms with the existential threat of climate collapse can easily lead to distress and despair, but with so much at stake, it is imperative that we not only absorb statistics and haunting images of destruction, but also zero in on the front lines of struggles like the fight against Line 3, where Water Protectors are modeling a relationship with the Earth that could help guide us into a new era.
The Theft of Water
The Giniw Collective has been vocal about Enbridge’s overuse of local water supplies during an ongoing drought. Enbridge was initially authorized to pump about 510 million gallons of water out of the trenches it’s digging, but in June, the company claimed it had encountered more groundwater than it had anticipated, and obtained permission to pump up nearly 5 billion gallons of water, in order to complete the project. According to Line 3 opponents, Enbridge paid a fee of $150 to adjust its permit.
Giniw Collective members say it’s unconscionable that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources would allow Enbridge to displace so much water, particularly during a drought. “We’ve been in an extreme drought all summer long,” says Houska. “The rivers have been dry, the waterfalls are empty, and the wildfires have spread into Ontario and up on the north shore of Lake Superior.”
Activists organizing against Line 3 and members of the White Earth Nation argue that Enbridge’s voracious consumption of local groundwater threatens local wetlands, including cherished wild rice beds. “With higher than average temperatures and lower than average precipitation, displacing this amount of water will have a direct detrimental impact on the 2021 wild rice crop,” wrote Michael Fairbanks and Alan Roy, tribal chairman and secretary-treasurer of the White Earth Nation.
For refusing to embrace the death march of capitalism, and resisting the destruction of most life on Earth, two Line 3 opponents are being charged with attempted assisted suicide.
According to the UN, “By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water stressed conditions.” Scientific projections suggest that many regions of the U.S. may see their water supplies reduced by a third, even as they face increased demand for water due to a growing population. As world temperatures rise, and water scarcity continues to escalate, Enbridge is displacing 500 billion gallons of groundwater to build a pipeline that will transport 915,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil per day, threatening more than 200 water ecosystems — including 389 acres of wild rice, which are a source of sacred sustenance for the Anishinaabe.
The White Earth Nation has brought a “rights of nature” lawsuit against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, in an effort to defend wild rice, or manoomin, which means “good berry” in the Ojibwe language, against the destruction being waged by Enbridge. According to Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Ojibwe tribe, for the Ojibwe people, manoomin “is like a member of the family, a relative,” which means “legally designating manoomin as a person … aligns with the Ojibwe world view.” As Pember writes, “According to [the United Nations’ 6th Assessment on Climate Change], recognition of Indigenous rights, governance systems and laws are central to creating effective adaptation and sustainable development strategies that can save humanity from the impacts of climate change.”
The suit is only the second rights of nature case to be filed in the United States and the first to be filed in tribal court. But as Pember notes, “Several tribes, however, have incorporated rights of nature into their laws.”
According to the nonprofit organization Honor the Earth, “The proposed new oil pipelines in northern MN violate the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg by endangering critical natural resources in the 1854, 1855, and 1867 treaty areas.” In a statement outlining the alleged treaty violations, Honor the Earth explains, “The pipelines threaten the culture, way of life, and physical survival of the Ojibwe people. Where there is wild rice, there are Anishinaabeg, and where there are Anishinaabeg, there is wild rice. It is our sacred food. Without it we will die. It’s that simple.”
Buying the Police
During the movement in Standing Rock, we saw that resistance to pipeline construction can generate significant costs for local governments. In 2018, Morton County Commissioner Cody Schulz claimed that protests that aimed to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) cost the county almost $40 million. But rather than serving as a deterrent to other municipalities considering pipeline permits, the cost of the NoDAPL protests have been leveraged by authorities to more blatantly merge the interests of police and oil companies.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission included a provision in Enbridge’s permit for the project that requires the company to establish an escrow trust that would reimburse local law enforcement for any mileage, wages, protective gear and training related to the construction of Line 3. In order to access the funds, law enforcement agencies submit requests for reimbursement to a state appointed account manager — a former deputy police chief — who approves or denies the requests. In April of 2020, The Minnesota Reformerreported that Enbridge had paid over $500,000 to local law enforcement in support of pipeline construction. That number has since ballooned to $2 million.
“The level of brutality that is experienced by Indigenous people and allies in struggle with us is extreme,” Houska told me. “About a month ago now, I was a part of a group that experienced rubber bullets and mace being fired at us at very, very close range,” said Houska. “I was hit several times, but I also witnessed young people with their heads split open, bleeding down their faces … and sheriffs have been using pain compliance on people, which is essentially torture. They dislocated someone’s jaw a couple weeks ago.”
“Living at Namewag shows us what a post-capitalist world could begin to look like.”
As Ella Fassler recently reported in Truthout, “More than 800 Water Protectors have been arrested or cited in the state since November 2020, when the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) approved the Line 3 permit.” The total number of arrests along Line 3, since November of 2020, has surpassed the total number of arrests during the Standing Rock protests, in which nearly 500 people were arrested. The charges Water Protectors and land defenders face are likewise escalating. According to the Pipeline Legal Action Network, 80 Water Protectors were charged with felonies during July and August of 2021, and as Mollie Wetherall, a legal support organizer with the legal action network told Fassler, “It’s clear that they really are in a moment where they want to intimidate people as the construction of this pipeline winds down.”
Direct actions similar to those that garnered misdemeanor charges two years ago have more recently led to felony charges. According to the Giniw Collective, which has bailed out hundreds of Water Protectors, individual bonds have often run between $10,000 and $25,000, making bail fundraising a crucial point of solidarity work.
Disturbingly, in late July, two Water Protectors were charged with felony assisted suicide for allegedly crawling into the pipeline as part of a lockdown action. Officials claim the pipeline was an estimated 130 degrees and lacked oxygen. The criminal complaint lodged against the two activists claims that they “did intentionally advise, encourage, or assist another who attempted but failed to take the other’s own life.” The charge of felony assisted suicide carries a 7-year prison sentence, $14,000 fine or both. If convicted, the Water Protectors could face up to 13 years behind bars.
For refusing to embrace the death march of capitalism, and resisting the destruction of most life on Earth, two Line 3 opponents are being charged with attempted assisted suicide. “These are 20, 21, 22-year-old people, who are literally chaining themselves to the machines, crawling inside of pipes, doing everything and anything they can to have a future,” says Houska. “And the charges being waged, like felony theft and felony assisted suicide for people who are trying to protect all life, [are] absolutely appalling, and a horrific reality of Water Protectors being imprisoned while the world burns around us.”
Members of Congress, including “the Squad,” signed a letter to President Biden on August 30, 2021, calling on the president to “uphold the rights guaranteed to Indigenous people under federal treaties and fulfill tribal requests for a government-to-government meeting concerning Line 3.” Among other concerns, the letter cited the troubling financial ties between Enbridge and local law enforcement, stating:
Law enforcement entities in the region have received around $2 million from Enbridge to pay for police activity against water protectors, which has included staggering levels of violence, tear gas, and rubber bullets. While Enbridge was required to pay these costs under project permits, leaders have noted they create a conflict of interest as law enforcement are incentivized to increase patrols and arrests surrounding pipeline construction.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar also hosted a press conference on September 3 to draw further attention to the struggle to stop Line 3, which included remarks from U.S. Representatives Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Sen. Mary Kunesh-Podein. During the press conference, Omar declared, “The climate crisis is happening and the last thing we need to do is allow the very criminals who created this crisis to build more fossil fuel infrastructure.” Bush, Presseley, Tlaib and Kunesh-Podein also visited the Giniw Collective’s Namewag Camp to hear from Water Protectors firsthand about the struggle. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that she had planned to join the group as well, but her plans were derailed by the climate impacts of Hurricane Ida in her district.
Finding a Home on the Front Lines
Despite the brutality protectors have faced, people have continued to answer the call to head to the front lines. After years of engaging in solidarity actions at banks and financial institutions that are funding the construction of Line 3, one activist — who asked to be identified by the name Marla, so as not to facilitate state surveillance of her actions — left her job as a nanny in Chicago and headed to the front lines in May of 2021. “I had never seen a pipeline before,” Marla told me. “I had only done solidarity organizing up until this point. Land defense was something new entirely to me, but I knew that bank actions alone were not going to stop this pipeline.” Marla saw heading to the front lines as “a tangible way to show up as an accomplice for Indigenous sovereignty.”
While living at Namewag has meant bearing witness to police violence, deforestation and constant state surveillance, Marla says it has also meant experiencing “a microcosm of the world we all want to build.” Marla says the Giniw Collective’s camp “an incredible place to live in community and resistance.”
“Living at Namewag shows us what a post-capitalist world could begin to look like,” says Marla, “where labor is valued because it keeps our community safe, skilled up and fed from the land.” Marla says the camp is a place “to see accountability in action, to learn and unlearn, and do better.” While police and the surveillance state can be intimidating, Marla says, “We keep each other safe working overnight security shifts by night and supporting folks taking action by day.” Marla also describes the camp as a joyful place, even amid pain and struggle. “Cooking meals from the garden, living outside among the trees, washing the camp’s dishes, [providing] elder and childcare, and making space for joy — all of these things sustain us.”
“People have consistently been showing up for the struggle,” Houska told me. “And that is a beautiful thing to witness and be part of.” Houska says that almost 90 percent of Line 3 construction is now complete. “We are still resisting, in the face of that reality,” says Houska. “So, if you’re planning to show up, please show up with your heart, and your good intentions and do your best to find your way to the place that calls to you.” Houska also encourages supporters to “use whatever platform or voice and agency you have to call on the Biden administration, and also to call on other people around you” to take action to stop the pipeline.
“This fight is not just about looking upwards,” says Houska. “It’s also looking at each other. This is our world, and no one else is going to protect it, but all of us.”
To learn more about other powerful movement work like the struggle against Line 3 and mutual aid efforts across the country, check out our podcast “Movement Memos,” which will release its next episode on Wednesday, September 15.
Kelly Hayes is the host of Truthout’s podcast “Movement Memos” and a contributing writer at Truthout. Kelly’s written work can also be found in Teen Vogue, Bustle, Yes! Magazine, Pacific Standard, NBC Think, her blog Transformative Spaces, The Appeal, the anthology The Solidarity Struggle: How People of Color Succeed and Fail At Showing Up For Each Other In the Fight For Freedom and Truthout’s anthology on movements against state violence, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Kelly is also a direct action trainer and a co-founder of the direct action collective Lifted Voices. Kelly was honored for her organizing and education work in 2014 with the Women to Celebrate award, and in 2018 with the Chicago Freedom School’s Champions of Justice Award. Kelly’s movement photography is featured in “Freedom and Resistance” exhibit of the DuSable Museum of African American History. To keep up with Kelly’s organizing work, you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
