Editor’s note: The Extraction Economy and oil pipelines are everywhere, and they affect everyone. If you are white enough, rich enough, and/or lucky enough, the pipelines might not be built in your backyard, but no matter who you are, they contaminate the water, air, and land upon which you depend for your life. The distance does not keep you safe, it only delays alarm. There are no safe places to hide from a culture and economy based on extraction, drawdown, theft, genocide, and ecocide; this culture eats beautiful forested lands, rich seas, and clear skies and leaves behind wasteland, toxic dead zones, and, possibly in the near future, an inhabitable planet. If it doesn’t seem like this culture and its economy steals wealth of all sorts for the benefit of a few, it’s very likely that you live in an exclusion zone rather than a sacrifice zone. The exclusion zones are where resources are sent, where power is concentrated, where the in-group is nourished. Sacrifice zones are where resources are extracted, where power is enforced to maintain subjugation, where the out-group is impoverished. Even if you recognize the material problems this culture produces, its strong tradition of silencing dissent, erasing indigenous cultures and knowledge, and spreading self-serving disinformation obscure the root cause of these problems. For thousands of years, the dynamic of the haves and the have-nots has been at the core of an evolving culture that dominates and erases other cultures. It has taken many forms, including city-states, empires, kingdoms, feudalism, mercantilism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and fascism. The common denominator is a selfish urge to profit at the expense of others, beginning about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture and male subjugation of women. This developed into various socioeconomic structures that depend on and thus facilitate the destruction of life. The dominant culture abuses the earth just as it abuses women.
“When it comes to protecting the planet, stopping pipelines needs to be one of our first priorities. And like other Earth-destroying machinery, pipelines are very vulnerable. They stretch on for miles with no guards, no fences, and no protection.” – Max Wilbert
When Enbridge Inc. announced on September 29, 2021, its “Line 3 Replacement Project [was] Substantially Completed and Set to be Fully Operational,” Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth, issued a video response from the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota. After years of fighting against Enbridge’s efforts to desecrate Anishinaabe lands, Winona refused to give up the fight. In her words, “They’ve created their jobs. They put in their pipe. They won. They’ve committed a crime. And someone needs to stop them from making a profit off of that crime. Do something for the people. Stop Line 3 and give us a ‘just transition.’”
Line 3 is a project of Enbridge Inc., a multinational corporation headquartered in Alberta, Canada. Enbridge transports 30% of all oil produced in North America and operates 76,546 miles of pipeline across the continent. Last year, Enbridge reported yearly revenue of $39.853B, a 33.53% increase year-over-year. Line 3 is part of Enbridge’s Mainline System and runs 1,097 miles from Edmonton, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. Line 3 transports ‘tar sands oil,’ a variant of oil that the Union of Concerned Scientists denounces as “a mixture of mostly sand, clay, water, and a thick, molasses-like substance called bitumen…[which] on a lifetime basis…produces about 15% more carbon dioxide emissions.” Built in 1960, Line 3 initially transported 760,000 barrels of oil a day. But, as of 2019, it could only transport 390,000, about half the amount. Enbridge Inc. announced its Line 3 Replacement Project on October 24, 2014, by filing a Notice Plan with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC). In Enbridge’s words, the Line 3 Replacement Project will “maintain … high safety standards…and restore the historical operating capabilities of Line 3.”
But, the story of Line 3 is not that of “safety standards” and “operating capabilities.” Instead, it is the story of Honor the Earth and the Anishinaabe’s resistance against Line 3. It is the story of ‘manoomin,’ and Turtle Island again being attacked by the “Black Snake.” And it is the story of the MPUC’s failure to honor treaty rights and protect the Earth. Line 3 was not a failure of the State of Minnesota but rather the logical consequence of a settler-colonial political system determined to destroy the Earth and any potential for Native sovereignty. Enbridge knew it would face a fight, as with the Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL. But, this time, it came prepared. It assembled the Northern Lights Taskforce, “brought jobs to Minnesota,” and pursued every legal and illegal option available to nullify resistance to Line 3. Enbridge wielded its power to its advantage, and it won. But, that doesn’t mean that the resistance failed.
Andy Pearson, Midwest Tar Sands Coordinator at MN350, who was also detained at an MPUC hearing, said, “Although Line 3 is in the ground, the fight against tar sands and pipelines…is something that does continue and will continue. We’re seeing action against Line 5 in Northern Wisconsin, and we’ll see more work to build against the Enbridge Mainline System.” While Line 3 is just a single component of Enbridge’s vast infrastructure holdings across the so-called United States, Enbridge appeared determined to influence every unit of the State of Minnesota to its advantage. Despite resistance by Honor the Earth, StopLine3, MN350, the Giniw Collective, the Sierra Club, and many others, Enbridge was able to use the police, the legislature, and the PUC to neutralize the Anishinaabe people and affiliated water protectors.
Enbridge’s relationship with Minnesota law enforcement is well established. Before beginning construction on Line 3, Enbridge obtained a permit through the MPUC that outlined its financial responsibilities to the State of Minnesota, including Minnesota law enforcement. It states:
“Prior to construction, the Permittee shall establish a Public Safety Escrow Account…Local Government Units (LGU) shall submit in writing an itemized request to the Public Safety Liaison sufficient to recommend to the Commission’s Executive Secretary whether services rendered were additional municipal services uniquely provided as a result of construction of the pipeline during the term of this permit.”
While Enbridge didn’t explicitly approve of nor solicit this inclusion, it’s hard to imagine that they do not approve. The Northern Lights Task Force, a coalition of Police Departments in Northern Minnesota, including the Aitkin Police Department and Palisade Police Department, is also the direct beneficiary of this provision. The Escrow Account functions as a blank check written by Enbridge on behalf of the policing agencies in Northern Minnesota. There are few limitations on what can be included in a reimbursement request. And in documents obtained by The Intercept, one Aitkin Police Department Seargent expressed hope that “the pipeline will give us an extra boost to next year’s budget, which should make it easy for me to propose an upgrade/trade to your rifles rather than a rebuild of our 8 Bushmasters.”
Shanai Matteson, a Cultural & Campaign Organizer at Honor the Earth and lifelong resident of Palisade, Minnesota, was heavily involved in the resistance against Line 3. In one incident, Shanai was charged for, in her words, “conspiring, aiding and abetting trespass on critical public infrastructure” for making “a speech at a rally where I live, also known as the Welcome Water Protectors Camp.” On the 30th Anniversary of the Enbridge Oil Spill in Itasca County, Shanai was charged after officers “kettled and arrested dozens of people taking part in a memory march.” When asked about the relationship between the State of Minnesota and Enbridge, Shanai indicated, “What happened here in Northern Minnesota sets a dangerous precedent…with local law enforcement paid to police the property and profits of a private company.”
According to a Permit Compliance Filing with the MPUC, “$250,000 was deposited on May 8, 2020” into the Escrow Account. But, in total, Enbridge paid $2,171,008.84 to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and millions more to police departments across Northern Minnesota. Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth, said she “was charged by a DNR officer first…so the guys charged with protecting us are the guys arresting us.” On June 15, 2021, Enbridge pierced an aquifer near its Clearbrook Terminal worksite. According to the DNR, as of September 5, 2021, 24.2 million gallons of groundwater had been spilled. As a penalty, the DNR ordered Enbridge to pay 3.32 million dollars. And yet, on September 10, 2021, Enbridge pierced another aquifer near the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation, spilling 220 million gallons of groundwater.
The Department of Natural Resources and the State of Minnesota did nothing to stop Enbridge’s criminal misconduct in Northern Minnesota. But that shouldn’t be a surprise. Enbridge bought off the police and was willing to accept whatever fine the DNR might levy, as long as it meant Line 3 was in the ground. Yet, at the same time, viewing Enbridge’s relationship with the Northern Lights Taskforce, the State of Minnesota, and the Department of Natural Resources through this lens of corruption or malfeasance doesn’t do justice to the nature or extent of the relationship. It is no mistake that the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation had 220 million gallons of water spilled into its Dead Fish Lake, threatening its wild rice harvest. Nor was it a mistake that Winona LaDuke, the ‘guardian ad litem for the Shell River’ appointed by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, was arrested protecting the very river she swore to protect.
The Public Utilities Commission’s permit for Line 3 includes provision 6.11, titled Tribal Economic Opportunity and Labor Education Plan, which states, “The Plan must include…a discussion of how Minnesota-based tribal members and businesses will be given preference under the committed target.” Additionally, it demands that “The Plan…include: a discussion of a Regional Native American Training Program with the purpose of recruiting and training Native Americans in the region.” Enbridge employed 12,155 workers during its Line 3 Replacement Project, 295 of which identified as Native Americans and residents of Minnesota.
Even the Public Utilities Commission, despite serving as Enbridge’s puppet, recognized the plight of Native communities in Northern Minnesota.
Due to the legacy of displacement, assimilation, and extermination, Anishinaabe communities in Northern Minnesota have the highest poverty rates in the State. I.e., the 36.8% poverty rate on the Red Lake Reservation or the 37.9% poverty rate on the Leech Lake Reservation. If it could have a consciousness, Enbridge would not devote it to Minnesota, and certainly not the Anishinaabe. To Enbridge, the Anishinaabe are a resource and, at times, a nuisance. They are ‘people of the past’ and people to control. The MPUC urges Enbridge to “train” the Anishinaabe. But, here, “train” does not mean support or teach; instead, it means ‘to control.’ For Enbridge, it would be financially expedient to exterminate the last and only obstacle standing in the way of Line 3—the Anishinaabe who have stewarded the land for generations.
And while the Public Utilities Commission forbade “counterinsurgency tactics or misinformation campaigns” in Provision 5.5 titled Public Safety and Security, Enbridge didn’t listen. Documents obtained by the Intercept indicate that Enbridge launched an initiative titled “Opposition Driven Operational Threats,” which systematically documented and categorized Native individuals, tribes, and organizations into color-coded arrangements indicating whether or not they were a threat. In 2021, Enbridge event went so far as to purchase land near the headquarters of Honor the Earth (which they later sold after completing Line 3). While the relationship between Enbridge and the Northern Lights Task Force is well documented, Enbridge’s internally discussed strategy in directing the police against water protectors is less well known. Like a ‘black box,’ we know the result—nearly 900 arrests—but don’t know all of what went into Enbridge’s strategy.
While the battle against Line 3 is over, that does not mean that Honor the Earth or, for that matter, any other individual or organization involved in the fight against Line 3 has given up. Hundreds of water protectors are still facing charges, many of them, in StopLine3’s words, “with trumped-up felonies, with most of the felonies being bogus “theft” charges,” and a new campaign, “Drop the Charges,” has been launched to support those facing jail time upon conviction. But Enbridge hasn’t given up either. The fight against Line 5 is heating up in Michigan as Enbridge attempts to build a tunnel underneath the Straits of Mackinaw despite the opposition of the State of Michigan and the Bad River Tribe. When asked about the battle against Line 5 and why, despite the massive influence of a corporation like Enbridge, it’s still work fighting, Paul DeMain, Board Chair of Honor the Earth and Tribal Member of the Bad River Tribe, had this to say: “You know why? Because Enbridge fears the truth. And that’s what we’re fighting up against.”
Shanai Matteson, a 39-year-old White settler, sat in the stuffy overflow room watching the packed Public Utility Commission meeting, along with more than a hundred others, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2018. Over several hours, she listened as dozens of people—Native elders, local landowners, and young people concerned about their futures—testified against the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, urging the commission to deny the project a key permit. She listened, too, as Enbridge workers, bused in by the company, voiced their support for the pipeline.
Matteson remembers the collective dismay and anger in the room as the five-person board approved Enbridge’s permit request. She also remembers what happened next: Tania Aubid, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, stood up and told the commissioners that they had just declared war on the Ojibwe people.
Outside of the conference hall, organizers held a rally. Matteson listened as Winona LaDuke, a member of the White Earth Nation and executive director of the nonprofit Honor the Earth, spoke alongside several youth interveners—teenagers who were suing to stop the pipeline in court. Listening to their words, Matteson was moved by their unwavering dedication―to the land, water, and climate, but also to upholding the treaty agreements, which were being violated by this pipeline project.
After the news conference, Matteson packed her two young children into the car. They drove for nearly three hours before reaching a part of the land where the Mississippi starts to widen into one of the nation’s most storied rivers. It was a place she knew well. Matteson’s family had lived in the area for five generations, ever since her great-great-grandfather, Amasa, settled a homestead and opened a small sawmill on 1855 Treaty land. She’d grown up in the nearby town of Palisade, Minnesota, population 150.
Here was where Enbridge planned to drill the Line 3 pipeline under the Mississippi.
Standing on the riverbank that night, Matteson made a pledge to do everything she could to uphold the treaties and to stop Line 3. “I remember that day, saying to myself ‘I am making a commitment to this fight,’ ” Matteson recalls.
Defending Treaty Rights: From the Salish Sea to Line 3
On July 25, a Lummi Nation-carved totem pole will pass through the Mississippi Headwaters, under which Enbridge plans to drill the Line 3 pipeline. It’s part of a 1,500-mile journey from the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest through numerous Indigenous sacred sites, including Bears Ears in the Southwest and Standing Rock in the Midwest, en route to Washington, D.C. The totem pole is intended to invite Native and non-Native people to connect with the idea of broken treaties and the ongoing efforts to honor them, especially when treaty rights come into conflict with extractive capitalism.
Putting a hand on the totem pole, as people are invited to do at each sacred site event stop, one can’t help but feel a sense of awe for the many stories, hopes, and prayers it carries—and to offer their own. The 24-foot pole, hauled on a trailer behind a pickup, bears images that tell stories of the present-day struggles faced by Indigenous communities—including the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, the crisis of children held in cages at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the work of language revitalization. One carving is a grandmother with seven tears, using culture to teach her granddaughter how to turn trauma into wisdom. The totem pole aims to serve as “a reminder of the promises that were made to the first peoples of this land and waters,” Lummi master carver Jewell James told The Washington Post.
These promises were made in the form of nation-to-nation treaty agreements, recognized in the U.S. Constitution as “the supreme law of the land.” For non-Native individuals residing in the U.S., treaty rights are still the legal mechanism giving people the right to live on ceded tribal land. Put another way, if settlers (like the two of us writing this piece) are not actively holding up their end of the deal, then they forfeit the right to be here.
In exchange, the U.S. government promised tribes services, such as health care, education, and housing—and in many cases, treaties reserved the right for Native people to hunt and fish within their traditional territory. Instead, the reality has been a history of genocidal massacres, forced displacement, brutal residential schools, the outlawing of language, religion, and culture, and broken treaty obligations. Only by confronting the context of the U.S.’s settler-colonial history can settlers begin to reckon with their personal identity as treaty people.
“Part of what’s so wonderful about the pole is how it invites people to learn about the treaty, and to learn about the true history of this country,” says Lummi tribal fisher and treaty advocate Ellie Kinley, co-founder of Sacred Sea, a Indigenous-led nonprofit whose mission is to defend Lummi sovereignty and treaty rights and promote Indigenous stewardship of the Salish Sea.
“Once you know the true history, you can learn from it, and become wise from it.”
“We Are All Treaty People”
On June 7, 2021, about 2,000 people attended Treaty People Gathering, a mass Line 3 protest in rural northern Minnesota. At one of two actions that happened that day, more than 1,000 people marched to a part of the Mississippi where the pipeline is slated to be drilled; at the other action, hundreds risked arrest (and more than 200 were arrested) shutting down an Enbridge work station for the day.
“We Are All Treaty People” was one of the gathering’s main rallying cries. They are words that Matteson has thought seriously about since that night at the Commission hearing.
In 2020, after two decades living and working in Minneapolis, Matteson moved her family back to Palisade. She quickly got involved with the Welcome Water Protector Center, a cultural camp supporting people standing with the Ojibwe opposing Line 3. She is now close friends with Tania Aubid, the founder of the camp and the Ojibwe woman who informed the PUC commissioners that Line 3 was an act of war upon her people. The women’s friendship has given them both the strength to do more. In early 2021, they embarked on a hunger strike together. To bring attention to the fight to stop the pipeline, Matteson went 21 days without food; Aubid went 38.
When asked why she moved with her two young children to the Welcome Water Protector Center, Matteson is clear that protecting the water and the climate were reasons, but so too was ensuring that her government upholds its side of the treaties.
“I’ve been reminded by so many Indigenous people that the treaties are not just a concern for Indigenous people,” she says, golden light falling between the trees at camp. “They were entered into by the U.S. government, and as citizens, we have a responsibility to ensure our government honors that law.”
Over the course of the 19th century, the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Nation, and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe signed treaties with the U.S. government—treaties that granted rights to U.S. citizens and reserved rights for tribal members. In recent years, tribal attorneys have argued that Line 3 would infringe upon those treaty-protected rights, including the right to cultivate and harvest wild rice―manoomin in the Ojibwe language―which is regarded as a sacred species and is a vital source of sustenance for local tribal members. “It’s a perpetuation of cultural genocide,” founder of Line 3 resistance group, Giniw Collective, Tara Houska told The Guardian, describing the impact Line 3 would have on manoomin.
It has been a long road for the tribal attorneys, a road made more complicated by the fact that some Native-owned construction companies and two other Ojibwe nations support the pipeline. Most recently, on June 14, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled against the tribes, finding that Enbridge had appropriately demonstrated that there was a need for the pipeline. There are, however, reasons to believe the Tribes’ case will fare better in a case at federal court, where it is to be heard in the coming months. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the favor of treaty rights in two high-profile cases.
But as the case makes its way slowly through the federal court system, the fight for treaty rights is playing out on its own timeline in the woods of rural Minnesota.
Before Line 3 was anywhere near the edge of the great Mississippi, Aubid and Winona LaDuke built a waaginogaaning, a traditional Ojibwe prayer lodge, on the banks of the river, in the exact spot where Line 3 was slated to be drilled under its waters. Earlier this year, in the depths of the Minnesota winter, Enbridge workers appeared on site, nailing “No Trespassing” signs to trees.
The workers informed Aubid and LaDuke that they were trespassing on Enbridge property.
“No, you’re trespassing,” Aubid replied.
When the workers returned with law enforcement, Aubid handed the police officer a copy of the 1855 Treaty Authority letter, informing them of her legal, treaty-protected right to practice her religion there. The police and the Enbridge workers left Aubid in her prayer lodge soon after, but nobody expected Enbridge to stay away for long.
They didn’t. In July 2021, Enbridge drilled under the river, despite Aubid, Matteson, LaDuke, and others wading into the river to try and stop them.
The prayer lodge still stands in the path of the pipeline, and dozens more people have joined the Welcome Water Protector Center as the fight against the pipeline is reaching a boiling point. Since December alone, nearly 600 people have been arrested for actions related to stopping the construction of Line 3 and tens of thousands more have marched, demanded that Biden intervene, and protested the banks funding the pipeline.
Aubid is clear on what she hopes will happen next. “We’d like more people to come here,” she says. “We’d like people to help us protect the lands, protect the waters, and to do what they can to uphold their side of the treaties.”
Later, as we walk beside the languorous waters of the Mississippi, Matteson reminds us of the importance of settlers upholding the treaties. “This isn’t history,” she says. “This is happening here. It is happening now.”
CORRECTION: This article was updated at 5:26p.m. on July 20,2021, to reflect the current state of the drilling. Read our corrections policy here.
Last Saturday morning, hundreds of activists gathered outside the Governor’s Residence to protest the approval of the 401 water quality certification for the Line 3 Pipeline. This permit, which was granted on Thursday by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, would allow Enbridge to cross 730 acres of wetlands and more than 200 streams in northern Minnesota.
This is the penultimate authorization required by Enbridge before it can officially begin construction on its controversial tar sands pipeline. The 401 permit will be sent to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure it complies with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. That agency must complete their review process before the MPCA will consider the pipeline’s Construction Stormwater Permit.
Line 3 has been under fire from activists and water protectors since its proposal in 2014. At the protest this morning, demonstrators denounced a number of issues associated with the project, including violations of Indigenous treaty rights, endangerment of wild rice, the correlation between construction (which involves building large man camps for pipeline workers) and sex and drug trafficking, as well as the murders and disapearances of Indigenous women. As a tar sands pipeline, the impacts of Line 3 on global greenhouse emissions, loss of native forests, and destruction of Minnesota wetlands and bodies of water are irreparable.
In the words of Taysha Martineau, a member of Fond du Lac tribe, “Today we are meeting at the Governor’s residence to show solidarity with all Indigenous communities that will be affected by the Line 3 pipeline. When Infrastructure such as Line 3 goes up, the statistics of violence against Indigenous women increase by 22 percent… When Tim Walz put pen to paper, he was educated on these statistics, and himself, Laura Bishop and Peggy Flanagan chose to ignore those voices. We echo those voices and turn those whispers today into screams, shouting with indignation as ongoing injustice against Indigenous people continues in America today.”
At the event, demonstrators formed a large picket line, distributed masks, and remained six feet apart to abide by COVID gathering restrictions. During the demonstration the Line 3 Pledge of Resistance was distributed among demonstrators, who committed to take action against the construction of this pipeline.
Looking forward, legal battles will continue, including challenges to Thursday permits in court, as well as an appeal from the Public Utilities Commission, which argues that the MPCA relied on an incorrect demand forecast when assessing financial need of the pipeline.
Once begun, Enbridge claims that pipeline construction will take between six to nine months to complete. As a result, water protectors are gearing up for a frontline battle, saying, “If you don’t stop Line 3, we will.”
For more information and live updates, call Genna Mastellone at 917-715-0670 or email media@resistline3.org.
The United States is built on a foundation of slavery and indigenous land theft. Racism is deep in the bones of this country. Where there is oppression, there is resistance: the ongoing Minneapolis rebellion against the white supremacist state and police murder has spilled out across the U.S. Deep Green Resistance stands in solidarity with principled resistance by any means necessary.
George Floyd’s Murder: An Act Of White Supremacy
By Jocelyn Crawley
One of the first things that came to my mind when I learned of George Floyd’s ruthless murder was a social theory, typically used to analyze the ideology that undergirds patriarchy: the thought of domination.
According to radical feminists such as Monique Wittig, the thought of domination involves the idea that the ruling class produces the ruling ideas.
These ideas come to support the ruling class’s dominance over all of the other members of society. Within this schema, the thought of domination entails assent to the ruling class (men) imposing limiting ideas on the servant class (women). One of these ideas is the notion that there are two categorically different sexes and that these distinctions entail sociological consequences.
One of the sociological consequences is the naturalization of the division of labor in the family, with this belief functioning as a catalyst for the cult of domesticity and male dominance of the public sphere.
As made plain by this brief summary, the thought of domination ensures that those in power (men) keep those who lack it (women) in a position of subservience and slavishness. Within this type of societal schema, women are vulnerable to and subjected to diverse forms of dehumanization, some of which include rape, domestic violence, pornography, and prostitution.
Dominance and dehumanization:
In addition to functioning as an accurate analysis of how patriarchy works, I believe the thought of domination is directly pertinent to the white supremacist act we witnessed when white police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for seven minutes while he was lying face down on the road. The video footage of the incident shows Floyd groaning and repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe.” After moaning while lying motionless near the foot of the squad car and being transported into an ambulatory vehicle, Floyd died. The only sense that I can make of this inhumane behavior is that the perpetrators have adopted the dominant society’s values of venerating domination as a desirable way to exist in the world because it enables one to become the abuser rather than the victim of abuse. Within a world predicated on a thought of domination in which whites are the ruling class and can therefore impose their rules on all other racial groups, the abuse they subject black people to frequently goes unquestioned and unpunished.
Lack of consequences:
In recognition of the fact that being a member of a ruling class oftentimes precludes one from experiencing repercussions under the law, the outcomes of George Floyd’s murder should be carefully considered if we are to truly understand how white supremacy works. All four officers involved in the event were terminated. Yet the question that persists in the minds of many protestors is: “Why wasn’t Chauvin arrested?” This was the same question that I came to ask myself after I learned that Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and William Bryan pursued Ahmaud Arbery in a truck while he was running through the neighborhood. Many are familiar with the footage displaying Ahmaud Arbery stumbling to the ground after being shot while Travis McMichael stood by with a shotgun.
Many are familiar with the horror and fear this murder generated in the black community as we realized, once again, men of color are subject to being shot by the police and arrogant white men within local communities. Many are familiar with the stories of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. What many of us are not necessarily familiar with is the logic that makes this heinous, inhumane behavior acceptable. This is why I propose that members of radical communities engage the thought of domination as the ideology that undergirds white supremacy.
It is clear that the primary system of thought that fuels and justifies the type of incomprehensible violence, we see as a product of white supremacy, is the thought of domination.
Domination is defined as the exercise of control or influence over someone or something, or the state of being so controlled. In a contemporary world whose zeitgeist is guided by white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, domination is and must be an integral component of the cultures in which people are immersed.
Principles of mutuality, reciprocity, and cooperation may periodically flourish or temporarily gain traction in people’s minds and actions. However, making the regimes of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy work requires that individuals recognize and respond to the realities created by those regimes. The reality that the regimes require is that an elite few exert extreme power over the masses, and that the masses respond to their own oppression by amassing as much agency and authority to themselves as possible while they grapple with the dehumanization and self-alienation engendered by the systems of oppression as distinct entities and a composite whole.
As one distinct component of the contemporary regime, white supremacy is predicated on the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially blacks.
Based on this false notion of superiority, whites come to believe (whether consciously or unconsciously) that they have a right to dominate society. When I read about horrific stories such as those of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I am convinced that the thought of domination is operative. I have no other explanation that would help me understand why a man would place his knee on another living, breathing human until he was no longer living and breathing. I have no other explanation that would help me understand why one individual would continue holding his knee on another living, breathing human as he begs for his life. When I learn that one white man holds his knee on a black man’s neck and continues doing so despite the latter repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe,” I am convinced the former has unequivocally embraced the logic of domination. In a world marked by this perverse logic, the murder of a black man is acceptable because whites are superior and any threat to their own safety-whether real or imagined-is more important than black life.
In recognizing the reality of white supremacy and the logic of domination that suffuses and energizes it, individuals who find injustice intolerable must begin to revisit whether the strategies of resistance that have been conceptualized and implemented at this point are working.
If they aren’t, we need to refocus our energies. At this point, I am seeing a wide range of social media campaigns as a strategy of resistance. I have also seen footage of a street protest. Recently, I became aware that several demonstrators gained access to a police precinct in Minneapolis and set some sections of it on fire. There are also now reports of vandalism, arson, and looting. While I do not doubt the importance and efficacy of the levels and extent of resistance seen thus far, I also see that white supremacy-manifested through police brutality-remains resilient in the face of resistance. For these reasons, I have two suggestions for the resistance movements that are unfolding strategically or organically.
First, the agitation against the state must increase. I noted that a tent has been placed outside the home of the attorney handling George Floyd’s case (Mike Freeman) and several protestors claim that they aren’t going anywhere until Freeman prosecutes and charges the officers involved. I think more space needs to be occupied so that state representatives become aware that protestors are not retreating into their private worlds while the public realm remains a sphere dominated by white supremacist ideologies and praxis.
Second, individuals across the country and world who oppose this state violence should join forces and make the resistance movement a more tight-knit process. I am aware that NYC-based Black lives Matter activists are heading to Minneapolis to protest the murder. This is the type of solidarity that we need to see in order to ensure that the authority and agency that results from mass resistance engenders a profound shift in cultural consciousness and state activity.
As always, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Her intense antagonism towards all forms of social injustice-including white supremacy-grows with each passing day. Her primary goal for 2020 is to connect with other radicals for the purpose of building community and organizing against oppression.
From a talk delivered November 1, 2019. Northern Michigan University Sonderegger Symposium: Anishinaabek: East, South, West, North. Marquette, MI. Featured image: American Progress by John Gast, ca. 1872.
Overview
I’m going to cut straight to the point: averting climate change is not going stop the global collapse of the planet as we know it.
Don’t get me wrong. Climate change is a global emergency and will cause tremendous damage, and, in fact, already has for many.
But the thing is, massive, global-scale destruction has been going on for a long time even before climate change. Although it has roots that go back further, 1492 marks the beginning of this global emergency.
So, first, averting climate change will not stop the global emergency because climate change is only one part of this global emergency.
Second, addressing climate change using the values and viewpoints of this Western culture will only exacerbate the problem. The disease powered by solar fields is still the same disease that is powered by coal.
Third, Western industrial civilization is the cause of the global collapse of the planet as we know it.
Thus, fourth, this Western culture must change if we want to save the planet as we know it.
Finally, fifth, we need to look to healthy cultures for answers about how to change this diseased culture so we can not just avert climate change but also end today’s global ecological collapse. One way to do this is to become acquainted with the resistance movements of healthy cultures. We have examples we can learn from right here in Anishinaabe territory.
Identifying the Problem
To begin at the beginning, what exactly is the problem?
In 1800, half the planet’s land was still in tribal hands.[1] Over the next 150 years, “virtually all indigenous territory” in the world was taken over “by colonizing industrial states” with around 50 million Indigenous people dying in those 150 years alone.[2] In the Americas, this genocide began in 1492 with some estimating as much as 90% of the Indigenous peoples here wiped out.
As this settler culture spread, it deliberately destroyed not only Indigenous human peoples and their ways of life but also the lives and cultures of the Indigenous non-human peoples. Untold numbers of plant and animal relations driven to extinction or near-extinction. Waterways choked with poison. 80% of the planet’s forests annihilated.[3] Grasslands destroyed. Children stolen. Cultures shredded. Or to quote one British author extolling the virtues of European colonization of Indigenous Africa: “This great work of progress will be accomplished through the religion of God. Africa shall be redeemed . . . Her morasses [swamps] will be drained; her deserts shall be watered by canals; her forests shall be reduced to firewood. Her [African] children shall do all this . . . In this amiable task, they may possibly become exterminated. We must learn to look upon this result with composure. It illustrates the beneficent law of Nature, that the weak must be devoured by the strong.”[4]
The majority of people in the settler culture not only stood by and watched this apocalypse but actively promoted it as Progress, although a few wept tears for the passing of the natives. Still, even for the sympathetic, it was assimilate or be annihilated – Progress is inevitable.
Then climate change came along. Suddenly the privileged elites felt threatened realizing this time they, too, will be feel the impacts of their own destructive culture. This time, they are concerned and want to take urgent action to stop the destruction.
The problem is their version of “urgent action” doesn’t call on sufficient change to address the problem because they don’t understand the cause of the problem. Most climate activists look at this industrial civilization and boldly claim the urgent action we must take is to stop powering this civilization with fossil fuels. We can do this, they say, with a carbon tax or a carbon dividend. We can do this with mega-wind and mega-solar. Their version of “urgent action” means getting off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible and replacing them with “green” energy sources. A technologically intensive civilization powered by wind, they argue, is the wave of the sustainable future. If we do this, as long as we haven’t yet passed the tipping point, we will stop global climate change and save the planet. Then we can get back to the business of Progress as usual.
The changes the elites want are only those changes that will allow them to continue their materialistic, colonizing way of life. Swept up in the urgency of things, everyone else gets swept up in their fervor, a fervor that feeds the disease and keeps it going. Haudenosaunee philosopher-activist John Mohawk compares it to being rabid.[5] Santee activist John Trudell calls it being “industrially insane.”[6] Aboriginal Australian singer/songwriter Bobbie McLeod sees it as a culture of Wayward Dreams. It is the culture that needs to change, this disease that needs to be cured. From there, all else will follow.
Artist: John Hunter (Gamilaraay)
Other Indigenous teachings from the Honorable Harvest to the Hopi Prophecies to the Anishinaabe Seventh Fire prophecy talk about what happens when a culture is out of balance with the Earth. The problem we need to address today, according to these teachings and prophecies, is not so much whether industrial civilization is powered by wind or coal but whether or not industrial civilization itself is sustainable. It also the raises the question: is the inherent parasitism of civilization even moral?
Industrialism has greatly exacerbated the disease of civilization. Yet Columbus landed in what we now call the Americas well before the Industrial Revolution. The Western cultural arena he came from was already grossly disconnected from the land, its burgeoning population well beyond the land’s carrying capacity[7], and thus most of Europe, even before the Industrial Revolution or before capitalism, was already wreaking havoc with its landbase.
Europe itself had undergone colonization by civilized cultures some centuries before Columbus. Prior to the civilizing of Europe, Europe was alive with tribal societies. The civilizing of those tribal societies by colonizers is likely where much of Europe’s disconnect from the land arose.
Yes, I just contrasted tribal societies with civilized cultures.
Um…what?
Trudell says, “The Great Lie is that it is ‘civilization.’ It’s not civilized, it has been literally the most bloodthirsty, brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization […] The great lie is that it represents ‘civilization.’ That’s the great lie. Or if it does represent civilization and it’s truly what civilization is . . . then the great lie is that civilization is good for us.”[8]
This is the conclusion many anthropologists, such as John Bodley, have come to.Civilization is not the human ideal we’ve been trained by this civilized culture to believe it is.
According to anthropologists (and as can be seen by the definition and origins of the word itself), a civilization is a society that is city-based. The city is the central point of power. Some of the traits that define a city-based society, as opposed to a tribal society, include the rise of economic, religious, and political power hierarchies and stratification within the urban society. The city needs these oppressive power structures for it cannot provide for itself from within its own borders. It needs the resources of the people who live on the land. This it most often obtains by force through such means as taxation, tribute, or outright military conquest. The primary target for an urban area to use for resources is the surrounding countryside, thus the rural area is made subject to the urban.
But the surrounding countryside is usually not sufficient to satisfy the urban appetite. Disconnected from the land and thus from understanding carrying capacity (or ignoring it), the urban world needs ever more land and resources for their ever-expanding populations. To get it, city-based societies or civilizations engage in what some anthropologists call “predatory expansion” against their neighbors.
For the last 6000 years, Indigenous people and their tribal societies have been targeted by civilizations by their predatory expansions. Europe itself was once a region of tribes who, if they followed the general pattern of tribal societies, would have lived in relative balance with their land and all their relations. Eventually, however, one by one the European tribes fell victim to the predatory expansion of their more civilized neighbors and became themselves one of history’s most destructive colonizers of tribal peoples.[9] As urbanite and historian Theodore Roszak writes, ““Whatever holds out against us[, the city] — [be it] the peasant, the nomad, the savage, we regard as so much cultural debris in our path.”[10]
But in the 6000 years of civilization and its predatory expansion, Indigenous peoples and other peoples of the land have resisted the incursions of civilization and its power inequalities, its colonization of rural/tribal areas, and its attempts to disconnect people from the land.
It was a mere two hundred years ago that, Indigenous peoples and their healthy lifeways protected half of the land on this planet. It is because of this that we have what little healthy land we have today. And it is this land today that is most targeted by resource corporations and their puppet governments in the Western world.
Despite the fact that some cultures got off track and became diseased with this cultural maladaptation of civilization, the Indigenous way of living with the land respectfully and in a good way is our heritage as human beings. All of us have a human heritage of more than 300,000 years of living well with our relations. It’s only in the last 6,000 that some of us have fallen ill and fallen out of balance. But it is human to live in harmony with the Earth. It is human to be at peace with the planet.
So, how do we cure this disease and move, once again, to a healthy way of living with Mother Earth?
Living the Circle: Learning from the Past
If we see the world through the lens of the Medicine Wheel, we will see our history is not a linear lockstep “progression” leading away from those good lifeways but rather a circle leading us back to them.
Our elders represent some of the greatest repositories of how to keep walking that circle. Climate activists of all ages can learn from them, and in fact many climate activists are those elders who have been on the front lines for decades. Without the work of these elders, we wouldn’t have the Endangered Species Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act. Without them, we wouldn’t have the treaties and the struggles to protect those treaty rights. We wouldn’t have had Wisconsin’s mining moratorium. The older generations have worked hard, sacrificed much, thinking of us today and those who are yet to come.
This resistance movement to protect this planet and all our relations, is generations old and has very ancient roots. If we follow the teachings of the Medicine Wheel, we know we need the gifts of all ages, from the young to the elders, to realize our full power as a people.
Here in the northern Great Lakes area, the rural resistance movement to Western industrial civilization has been alive and well for some time. Most of the rural resistance I’ll discuss here comes from the Anishinaabe communites, but some also comes from the non-Native people of the northern Great Lakes area.
The two-plus centuries of rural resistance in our region emphasize how important it is to:
+ Resist civilization in its attempts to control
+ Resist removal from the land
+ Resist the predatory expansion efforts of urban areas/civilization
+ Resist the ideologies of human supremacy
As these rural resistance movements up here show, we can do this by:
+ Becoming a member of the community of a particular land or region by living on the land
+ Maintaining and reclaiming self-sufficiency and the necessary land skills for that self-sufficiency
+ Respecting the sovereignty of all our relations in accordance with the Honorable Harvest
This Land Is Our Home: Resisting Removal from the Land
From the beginning of the treaty era in the Anishinaabe homeland, people showed their reluctance to sign away their land or to leave the land they had belonged to for generations. Alfred Brunson, an outspoken Indian agent at LaPointe (whose criticism of the American government’s treatment of the Anishinaabe lost him his job within a year), wrote in January of 1843, “[S]o much dissatisfaction exists among the Indians and half breeds of the Chippewas of this agency” that there are “many omens of a Threatening Storm,” some of which included “a party of warriors & braves on the [1842] treaty ground.”[11]
During the discussions leading up to the 1842 treaty, Acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs Robert Stuart told the Anishinaabeg “it was no difference whether they signed or not” as the land would be taken anyway.[12] He also issued a veiled threat of outright removal from their lands. While uttering assurances that it was only minerals not the land that the U.S. wanted at the present time, he suggested that in the future they would be removed like so many other tribes “sent west of the Mississippi, to make room for the whites.”[13] After his words, as historian Ronald Satz writes, the representatives “of the Wisconsin bands from the Lake Superior region remained silent.”[14] They were “not . . . willing to sell or make any agreement.”[15]
Eventually and reluctantly, however, the Anishinaabe did sign. Brunson points out that “the Indians did not act free & voluntary, but felt themselves pressed into the measure,” largely by Stuart’s tactics. [16]
Photo: Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission
In 1850, Stuart’s threat of eventual removal became U.S. policy. An executive removal order was issued by President Zachary Taylor to remove the Anishinaabeg of northern Wisconsin and the western U.P. to Sandy Lake, MN by moving the location of the tribes’ annuity payments.. Closing the Indian agency at Fort LaPointe on what many know today as Madeleine Island, the Anishinaabeg of the 1842 ceded territory were told they’d have to travel to the Sandy Lake agency to receive their annuity payments of cash, implements and food. The idea was to use a velvet glove to force the Anishinaabeg to settle around Sandy Lake (and out of the 1842 territory). To the U.S., the Anishinaabe land in question was known as “the mineral district” and removing the Indigenous people from the area could prove beneficial to mining interests, particularly as the Anishinaabeg had already shown a resistance or dissatisfaction to mineral exploration on their homeland. Many refused to make the trip to Sandy Lake. Those that did arrived in October to find they had to wait weeks for what turned out to be only a very small part of the annuity payment in early December. Dysentery and malnutrition weakened and even killed some of those who waited at Sandy Lake. Understanding the intent of this maneuver, most made their way back home in early December. Over 250 more people died along the way. The entire incident is often referred to as the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
Once back home, the people refused to move and instead organized a petition drive, obtaining signatures from the Native and non-Native community. A delegation, headed by Chief Buffalo, then an elder in his nineties, traveled to Washington D.C. to present the petition to President Fillmore. The petition, the delegation, and the refusal to be moved from their homeland were all eventually successful as the executive removal order was rescinded.
Defending the Land: Resisting Civilization’s Predatory Expansion
Those who live on the land and call it home are more apt to defend that land from those who threaten it. As you see, we have a long history of such land defense in the rural resistance of the northern Great Lakes area.
Prior to Sandy Lake, back in 1820, the territory of Michigan organized the Cass Expedition whose purpose was to assess the natural resource wealth of the Anishinaabe homeland, land still legally Anishinaabe territory as the major land cession treaties were still over a decade away. The Cass Expedition was, pure and simple, a predatory expedition, surveying another’s homeland to assess its potential to benefit American civilization.
According to Henry Schoolcraft in his Narrative Journal of the Cass Expedition, the Anishinaabe people resisted giving him information that would lead the Expedition to the minerals they sought.[17] This was an early example of the Anishinaabeg resisting the mining that has plagued our region for the last century. In another instance of such mining resistance, a contemporary historian writes, “We know that the upper lake Indians traditionally opposed white mining exploration before and after the treaty [of 1842], and that Father Baraga had opposed mines in the Ontonagon and Keweenaw country.” [18]
Anecdotal evidence of resistance to industrial civilization on the part of the Anishinaabe in the Great Lakes area also comes from Broker’s account of her great-great-great-grandfather who worked in the settlers’ logging camps. “I do not like cutting the trees,” he says. “I think too often of the animal people. They will be few, and they will be gone from this land. When we have enough of the lumber, I shall no longer cut the trees or travel the rivers on them. My heart cries too often when I do this.”[19]
1910 Wisconsin Lumber Camp — Wisconsin Historical Society
In Anishinaabe country, there are and have been non-Native people who struggle to defend the land they’ve come to call home. One of the ironies of history in the United States is that this is a nation founded on freedom and overthrowing colonialism. Yet the the nation is also founded on that same colonialism and thus is founded on the destruction of the lives, freedom, and lifeways of the land’s Indigenous peoples. That is still an identity crisis most Americans have yet to deal with. It’s why you can have American historian Frederick Jackson Turner decrying, and accurately so, that the closing of the frontier sounded the death knell for American democracy, yet, with no sense of irony, also firmly believing that taking the land from its Native people was all a necessary part of creating that beloved frontier.
Here in the northern Great Lakes area we have that same irony.
In the nineteenth century, as the Anishinaabeg were dispossessed of their land, settlers, land speculators, and resource corporations came in. The trees were cut and almost all of Northwoods’ pre-colonial forests were annihilated.[20] Mining corporations formed and tore up the Earth for minerals, poisoned the waters with mine run-off, and kept their laborers as serfs. Settlers came in an attempt to farm the cutover areas, areas that once rang with the laughter of Anishinaabe families and once were rich with the wellspring of Anishinaabe culture: the verdant and generous woodlands of the north country.
Those settlers who arrived to make a living on the land were often in competition with corporations and land speculators seeking to get rich off the land. This produced some interesting scenarios. These days, mining corporations may have convinced many in the U.P. that mining is our heritage here, or, as one oil and gas representative told me, that “Yoopers like to be exploited.” But that prejudice ignores the rest of the U.P.’s heritage. In fact, one could argue environmental resistance is our true heritage here in the northern Great Lakes area, a heritage the corporations would prefer we forgot. Finnish immigrants who worked ardently to unionize miners and then sought refuge in the backwoods from corporate thugs, are yet another example of this. And there are more.
We’ve even had what one historian calls “guerrilla warfare” launched by non-Native homesteaders against logging corporations up on the Keweenaw in the 1890s. A lumber company named Metropolitan Lumber claimed to own land that the U.P. homesteaders saw as their own. To protect “their” land from corporate interests, these nineteenth century Yooper homesteaders engaged in what we would call eco-terrorism today. Draft horses pulling corporate sleds of logs were shot and killed. Steel spikes were driven into logs that were intended for the Metropolitan Lumber sawmill. Iced corporate roads, perfect for pulling out heavy loads of timber, were melted with hot ash. One woman lay down in the middle of an icy winter road to prevent a horse-drawn sleigh from taking away logs that Metropolitan Lumber had cut on her land.[21][22]
In the last several decades, the Anishinaabe also have risen in force to protect their land from mining interests. In Wisconsin, one of the most successful mining resistance movements around the world came out of the struggle to exercise the Ojibwe treaty rights to hunt and fish in the 1842 ceded territory, a fight for the right to maintain self-sufficiency. This fight for treaty rights took on racism in some of its ugliest forms. The struggle merged with the movement to protect the Northwoods from the opening of a metallic sulfide mining district. In doing this, the Native and non-Native people of Wisconsin foiled the multinational mining corporations. As Anishinaabe activist Walt Bresette often mentioned, the corporations seemed intent on dividing the people of the northern Great Lakes area by fanning the flames of white supremacy and racism. In this way, Bresette pointed out, they attempted to manipulate the people of the Northwoods into fighting each other while the true threats to the land moved in and tried to open up a metallic sulfide mining district in northern Wisconsin. The people of the land, Native and non-Native, however, united despite their differences, and fought off the multinational mining corporations with the passage of the mining moratorium, also known as the Prove It First Law. This hard won struggle marked Wisconsin, according to one mining industry representative, as the toughest place on the planet to put in a mine.
Then we have the Bolt Weevils of central Minnesota.
The Bolt Weevils were farmers who organized in the 1970s to protect their lands and scenic areas from high-voltage transmission lines. The lines were intended to bring power from a coal-fired power plant in North Dakota through Minnesota’s rural areas to the urban populations of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. From the beginning, the power companies told them the same thing the U.S. government told the Anishinaabe: you can resist us, but it won’t matter because we’ll get your land anyway.
Local public opinion strongly supported the farmers in their opposition. The farmers used every legal means possible: public hearings, planning commissions who denied the permits, lawsuits. Despite it all, it was determined that the greater number of people living in the city counted more than the smaller number of people living on the land in the rural areas of Minnesota. As one veteran powerline resistor, Verlyn Marth, who lived in the area said, rural people are seen as “just a colony to be used.” He told them, “You are being programmed to think you are helpless. But they are an evil cartel assaulting individual farmers…It is your responsibility to beat the line. You are the stewards of the land.”[23]
Despite the farmers’ objections, the power lines in rural Minnesota were approved and construction began. But the farmers didn’t stop. Their resistance to the lines turned to physical violence against the power lines. The state governor called in the state troopers to protect the powerline as it was built through the rural areas. The Twin Cities got their coal-fired electrical power.
But the farmers still didn’t stop. As singer/songwriter Dana Lyons so aptly describes in “Turn of the Wrench.”
Farmers opposing the powerline
The thing is, when a society is civilized, this type of thing is part of its predatory means of obtaining resources for its urban populations. Even if the power had been wind-derived, the powerlines would still present the exact same issue for the farmers: destruction of their lands in order to supply power to the city.
In fact, in the heart of Anishinaabe country at the turn of the twenty-first century, the Lac Courte Oreilles band of Lake Superior Chippewa and eleven rural Wisconsin counties also opposed a 400 kV transmission line. The line was to connect central Wisconsin to Minnesota’s energy grid, helping, in part, to increase Manitoba Hydro’s ability to bring more electrical power to urban areas in the U.S. The power would come from “green” energy which actually meant the expansion of mega-dams that threatened traditional Cree homelands. The Cree helped the people of Wisconsin resist the line. When all counties passed resolutions opposing it, however, American Transmission Company told them they’d take their land anyway, only for less compensation under eminent domain. The line was built. The mega-dams expanded. Wisconsin bragged about how wonderful it was they’d obtained more “green” energy. Ask the Pimicikamak Cree and the people of northwestern Wisconsin how “green” that energy truly is.
Likewise here in the U.P., several communities have opposed energy projects sold as “green” projects. Most climate activists hearing of wind projects will uncritically support such projects. Summit Lake Wind Project near the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and the Heritage Wind Project on the Garden Peninsula are two such projects generating both rural resistance and knee-jerk climate activist reactions.
KBIC successfully opposed Summit Lake, not because they oppose wind in general, but because this “green” energy project would first clearcut an area that is 94% forested and full of all the gifts a forest offers. Further, in industrializing this wild area with the extensive road network needed for the turbine construction and to transport the heavy equipment for the project, KBIC feared it would open up the land to mining interests eager to get at the ore underneath the extensive forest, part of one of the largest wilderness areas left east of the Mississippi.[24]
The other example of this type of “green” energy project here in the U.P., Heritage Wind is built along a major bird migration route and, as such, is opposed by the USFWS among others. Although concerns are many, unique to the area are concerns over culturally significant sites, like the limestone caves containing pictographs of Anishinaabe constellations. To safely hold its 400+ foot wind towers, Heritage drills 200 foot deep foundations into the peninsula’s limestone. Some of the turbines will be built near the caves. Will the limestone be strong enough to resist collapse?[25]
None of the power from either of these wind projects would be generated for the rural communities they are placed in. Instead, for projects such as these the power they produce is loaded onto high-voltage transmission lines and made part of the national grid to be sold to urban areas. The rural area is the site for the energy generation. The urban areas are the sites for the energy use. This is energy colonization. The rural areas are being used as energy colonies for corporate “green” power production.[26]
Instead of colonizing rural areas with ever more electrical projects and ever more transmission lines, however, what if we as a society admit we have a problem – we are energy addicts. The biggest hurdle for any addict is first admitting there is a problem. Until then, the addict will do anything, no matter how destructive, to get what they crave. That’s happening right now. It’s time for it to change.
Resisting Control: The Right to Self-Sufficiency
The history of civilization’s attempts to colonize rural-wild areas to satisfy urban appetites clearly shows that destroying self-sufficiency to force people off the land into wage-dependency is an essential component of the colonizing process. Self-sufficiency makes people difficult to control.
more time spent in wage work, the less time there is available to engage in traditional land skills. This both makes peoples easier to control and weakens a people’s knowledge of the land and how to live with it. Colonial governments on Indigenous lands around the world have used Western-style education, wage-labor, and other civilizing methods to dispossess people from their homelands.
Robert Stuart, Acting Superintendent for Indian Affairs, was well aware of this colonial strategy. In 1843, he wrote about the Anishinaabeg, “There are those who think that all these Indians should be at once removed to the unceded district,” but this could not be “easily accomplished just now, as they have considerable game, fish, and other inducements to attach them to their present homes; but so soon as they realize the benefits of schools, and the other arts of civilization, which I trust we shall be able to cluster around them, there will be less difficulty in inducing them to renounce their present habits” and thus be able to remove them.[27] This approach was used around the world in colonization to varying degrees, including in Kenya where Indigenous workers were forced into wage labor by various taxation laws and then were forbidden from quitting their job, on pain of torture, without permission of their employer.[28]
Social engineers in the twentieth century employed a similar mindset with planning out what they saw as proper land use for the northern Great Lakes area. These social engineers came from urban universities. For example, P.S. Lovejoy (1918-1941), for example, was from the University of Michigan. George Wehrwein (1883-1945) from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. Both were well respected men in the early twentieth century, and their ideas about how the northern Great Lakes area should be regulated to allow for a healthy regeneration of this cutover area were highly regarded. In their view, everyone in the Northwoods should be productive members of the national industrial economy. Farmers should not farm for subsistence but should be for-profit farmers. People who lived far back in the woods, should be induced by zoning laws to move closer to towns. After all, George Wehrwein argued, without neighbors to watch over them, “people in the forest might resort to a sort of savagery, bereft of any standard of morality or cleanliness.”[29] Without this type of social engineering, Lovejoy argued, the northern Great Lakes area would continue “breeding paupers and morons and fires.”[30][31]
Out of this mindset came elitist game laws, intended to preserve wildlife for future generations of sportsmen rather than for those who hunted for food. They completely ignored Anishinaabe treaty rights. Despite having their way of life outlawed unless they could afford to buy the proper permits, people resisted these laws and managed to provide for their families regardless. As Ignatia Broker writes, “Then came the laws to control the fishing, the hunting, the trapping, even on the reservation lands…The Ojibway, however, continued to net fish and hunt deer as they had always done . . . [They] still laid nets for the fish and pulled them in early in the morning. But they had to clean, salt, and dry their catch inside their house instead of in the outdoor ovens, so the man who enforced the laws against using nets would not know.”[32][33]
One of the major obstacles to controlling a people, as identified by colonial agents, is a peoples’ ability to provide for themselves from their own land. One of the key causes of our current environmental and climate crises is that people around the world have been thrown off the land by this civilizing process. As a result, like Europe in 1492, most people today are disconnected from the land and no longer possess an intergenerational knowledge and love of a specific land. As such, we are all subject to ever greater control by our governments,and we face global ecological crises of cataclysmic proportions. As Okanagan author Jeanette Armstrong says, the corporations know “how powerful the solidarity is of peoples bound together by land, blood, and love.
Resisting Human Supremacy: Respect the Sovereignty of All Our Relations
In traditional Anishinaabe teachings, living with the land involves an intricate system of values that is based on seeing all beings as relatives, respecting their right to self-determination. Respecting the sovereignty of all our relations.
In striking contrast, Western industrial civilization is based on a belief in the supremacy of human beings. This Western belief in human supremacy[34] is found in its religion. It’s found in its secular views on other species. It’s found in its science. It permeates Western culture, justifying its takeover of the planet through industry, science, consumerism, and even conservation-minded management.
The Indigenous concept of respecting the sovereignty of all our relations is complex yet straightforward. Potawatomi biologist and author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, describes it well when she refers to this relationship as “the democracy of species.” Being a part of this democracy means participating as a respectful member of a community, not as its tyrant or emperor. Part of it involves giving respect to other beings so that we can see them as fully functioning, sentient, intelligent beings. Not as our slaves. Or our wards.
From a traditional Anishinaabe perspective, all species are sentient whether they are plant or animal. Yet there is the recognition that life gives its life for other life to continue. Part of living in this democracy of species as human beings is to follow the guidelines of the Honorable Harvest. In fact, hunting, fishing and gathering in the respectful manner outlined by the Honorable Harvest connects us to the land in an intimate manner. This connection helps us understand the land.
The Honorable Harvest also recognizes the sentience of all relatives. When harvesting blueberries, for example, you first ask permission of the blueberries to harvest. If they don’t give you that permission, you listen and do not harvest them.
One recent example of respect for the sovereignty of all our relations comes from the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Isle Royale is part of the traditional territory of the Grand Portage Band. As you know, there’s been an ecological conundrum of late as the predator/prey relationship of the moose and wolf is currently out of balance. The U.S. government determined relocation of wolves from other areas to the island was the best way to resolve the imbalance.
Grand Portage, however, initially opposed the relocation of wolves to Isle Royale. According to the band’s reply to the National Park Service Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the relocation plan, “The Grand Portage Band observes a cultural value that allows for natural cycles of predators and prey and the cultural philosophy of management only when necessary.” The band continues, “Thus, we urge non-interventionist policy for management of wildlife on Isle Royale National Park and feel that upholding the Park principle of maintaining unmanaged wilderness is most appropriate.” Wolves, they say, have only been on the island since 1949. Ice bridges often form between the island and the mainland. Wolves have used this ice bridge recently to cross to the island. But they choose not to stay. The band argued that for the next ten years at least, we should let nature take its course. [35]
The National Park Service eventually obtained the band’s cooperation when they agreed to first relocate Grand Portage wolves to Isle Royale. This, the band felt, would protect Grand Portage wolves from diseases and parasites that could be brought in if wolves from outside the area where relocated to the island.
However, of the four Grand Portage wolves relocated to Isle Royale, one died from the stress of captivity. A second died a month after being relocated to the island. Another wolf, a female who was radio-collared, left the island, crossing back to the mainland via an ice bridge – according to leading Western expert on wolf biology, David Mech, relocated (I’d say kidnapped) wolves released within eighty miles of their home will often return to their home.
The White Earth Land Recovery Project refers to Ma’iingan (the Wolf) as “[t]he one sent here by that all-loving spirit to show us the way.”[36] Ma’iingan, one of our very home-centered, family-oriented relatives, did once again shows us the way: our animal relatives are not there for us to control. A central tenet of traditional Indigenous philosophy that can be found around the world is the development of a relationship with all our relatives that respects the sovereignty and life force of those relatives as a whole and as individuals. The settler culture, however, being the civilized entity that it is, seeks to control that which is out of its control. This is central to the disease that so besets a civilized culture.
Yet there are non-Native people in the northern Great Lakes area who also demonstrate resistance to aspects of this diseased culture by protecting our non-human relatives. A retired teacher who has lived in my area since childhood is a recent example of this. A pillar of her Christian community, a well-respected member of various community organizations, this outspoken rural woman who usually votes Democrat, although she preferred to vote Green rather than vote for Hillary, lives at the end of a dirt road with her Republican husband. She loves and nurtures monarch butterflies. When the county Road Commission brushcutter headed down her way one summer, after having destroyed a milkweed patch along her road the previous year, she blockaded her end of the road with her car to protect the milkweed there, milkweed reserved for the monarchs. I call it, the Monarch Blockade, yet another great example of rural resistance. As the Earth-advocate Derrick Jensen often prescribes, find something you love, then stake yourself to it and protect it.
The Oshki-Anishinaabeg and the Green Path: On Being an Evangelical Heathen
I recently learned this summer that the word “heathen” comes from a time when England was converting to Christianity. People who lived in the city became Christian. These urban people looked down on the people who lived on the heath. The heath was a wild, “uncultivated” land. The people who lived there kept to the old tribal ways. The people of the city, like so many urban people of today, ridiculed the rural people as unenlightened and backward because it was those people, the people of the heath, the heathen, who kept to the old ways. [37]
Well, I have decided I am an unequivocal, evangelical heathen. I firmly believe returning to the wild, “uncultivated” lands and the old ways that belong to them is our way out of this mess. Our way out of climate change. Our way out of the larger global emergency that civilization has brought to this planet.
To quote a scientific report done in 1964, “It is realized that a whole system of culture and an age-old way of life cannot be changed overnight, but change it must, and quickly.”[38]
Like so much of civilization’s attempts to control and manipulate the people of the land, this report was directed at forcing the self-sufficient tribal peoples of India’s Chittagong Hills to become cash-croppers.
But this sentiment needs to be reversed.
Indigenous peoples around the planet were forced to change quickly from living in their well-adjusted tribal cultures to becoming part of the colonizers’ diseased, maladjusted one. The rapidity at which this happened shows how quickly cultures can change. But this time, it’s Western industrial civilization’s turn to change and change as quickly as possible. For those things that cannot humanely change rapidly (for example, in dealing with our overpopulated numbers), we need to start planning now on how to get to where we need to be. All of this needs to be part of a Seventh Generation Sustainability Plan wherein we work out where we need to be seven generations from now. Part of this involves long-range planning. Part of it involves urgent immediate changes.
As Trudell said, “Earth is a living entity. It is not in man’s destiny to destroy the Earth. That’s arrogance. What it is man’s destiny to do is destroy civilized man’s ability to live with the Earth… the antibiotic will come, in a planetary sense. If it means…letting it wipe out civilized man, then the Earth will do that. The Earth will continue on.”
The question is, will we?
The thing is, we have various Indigenous teachings and prophecies that are there to help. According to the Anishinaabe prophecy of the Seventh Fire, this is not only a time to be choosing the Green Path over the Burnt Path, but it is also a time when the oshki-anishinaabeg, the New People, will rise. Various culture bearers from Eddie Benton-Banai to Nick and Charlotte Hockings to Walt Bresette and others have felt this includes both Native and non-Native people. It refers to those people working to bring us back to the Green Path through finding that which was lost during the process of colonization.
The root causes of this global collapse are ignored, and in many cases, even exacerbated by the solutions proposed. Even if the ice caps stop melting and climate change is averted, as long as this industrial, technologically intensive, species-isolated culture continues as is, the apocalypse will continue until there is nothing left for us as human beings.
If, however, we recognize our potential in becoming the oshki-anishinaabeg we are prophesied to be, leading this society to the good path, we can enter a future where we don’t have to fear for our children and our children’s children.
I’d like to end with some words from Anishinaabe activist, Walt Bresette. As usual, in this excerpt of a speech he gave to a crowd at Northland College in Ashland, he offers us a way to build that bridge together and move into a world that, seven generations from now we can look back on and say, “We’re proud of what we’ve done.”
Miigwech. Mii i’iw.
Aimée Cree Dunn teaches at the Center for Native American Studies at Northern Michigan University.
[1] John Bodley. Victims of Progress. 6th edition. NY: Rowan & Littlefield, 2016. p7.
[2] John Bodley. Victims of Progress. 6th edition. NY: Rowan & Littlefield, 2016. p10.
[3] John Bodley. Victims of Progress. 6th edition. NY: Rowan & Littlefield, 2016. p184.
[5] John Mohawk. Thinking in Indian: The John Mohawk Reader. Ed. Josée Barreiro. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2010. p260.
[6]Trudell: A Film by Heather Rae. Passion River, 2007.
[7] Anyone who thinks overpopulation is not a problem, that overpopulation is not something that we should be concerned about, needs only to look at Europe in the fifteenth century. The overpopulation of Europe, like steam coming out of a boiling kettle, launched Columbus and the ensuing colonization of Indigenous lands around the world.
[8]Trudell: A Film by Heather Rae. Passion River, 2007.
[9] In fact, that is the danger in existing as an Indigenous person within a colonial society. The pull to assimilate is strong, to go with the crowd, even when it’s the liberal wing of the colonial society. Such assimilation, over generations, leads to becoming colonizers ourselves.
[10] Theodore Roszak. Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society. 1978. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1979. p243.
[11]U.P. Indian Treaties. Institute for the Development of Indian Law and Cook Christian Training School. “Treaty Rights Workshop: L’Anse Chippewa Treaty 1842.” Mimeographed copy at Northern Michigan University Olson Library. N.d. p36.
[16]U.P. Indian Treaties. Institute for the Development of Indian Law and Cook Christian Training School. “Treaty Rights Workshop: L’Anse Chippewa Treaty 1842.” Mimeographed copy at Northern Michigan University Olson Library. N.d. p36.
[17]U.P. Indian Treaties. Institute for the Development of Indian Law and Cook Christian Training School. “Treaty Rights Workshop: L’Anse Chippewa Treaty 1842.” Mimeographed copy at Northern Michigan University Olson Library. N.d. p8.
[18]U.P. Indian Treaties. Institute for the Development of Indian Law and Cook Christian Training School. “Treaty Rights Workshop: L’Anse Chippewa Treaty 1842.” Mimeographed copy at Northern Michigan University Olson Library. N.d. p8.
[19] Ignatia Broker. Night Flying Woman. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1983. 72.
[20] Most estimates place the amount of pre-colonial forest remaining in Michigan and Wisconsin at around 1%. Dickmann and Leefers write that by 1926, after less than 100 years of colonization in Michigan, only 7% of the original forest was left, most of that in the Upper Peninsula. They add “most of that has since been cut.” Donald I. Dickmann and Larry A. Leefers. The Forests of Michigan. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016. p173.
[21] Theodore J. Karamanski. Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging of Michigan. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1989. 101.
[22] This is not intended as a promotion of violent protest but rather simply referencing histories that are all too often ignored.
[23] Barry M. Casper and Paul David Wellstone. Powerline: The First Battle of America’s Energy War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. p44.
[29] James Kates. Planning a Wilderness: Regenerating the Great Lakes Cutover Region. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. p158.
[30] Qtd. in James Kates. Planning a Wilderness: Regenerating the Great Lakes Cutover Region. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. p48.
[31] For a more thorough discussion of this issue, see my article “Listening to the Trees: Traditional Knowledge and Industrial Society in the American Northwoods” originally published in Honor the Earth: Indigenous Response to Environmental Degradation and Beyond. Ed. Phil Bellfy. Now available at https://voiceforthewild.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/listening-to-the-trees/
[32] Ignatia Broker. Night Flying Woman. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1983. p117.
[33]For a more thorough discussion of this issue, see my article “Listening to the Trees: Traditional Knowledge and Industrial Society in the American Northwoods” originally published in Honor the Earth: Indigenous Response to Environmental Degradation and Beyond. Ed. Phil Bellfy. Now available at https://voiceforthewild.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/listening-to-the-trees/
[34] Derrick Jensen. The Myth of Human Supremacy. NY: Seven Stories Press, 2016.
![[Press Release] Water Protectors Protest Walz’s Permit Decision At Governor’s Residence](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/11/EmzWdF8XIAADcOM.jpg)
