Photo by Darby Ottoson
A Line 3 protest in Duluth in 2019
In September, Enbridge, the Canadian company behind the contested Line 3 project spanning northern Minnesota, announced that tar sands oil would start moving through the pipeline by October 1. However, the Indigenous-led resistance that has fought the pipeline since it was proposed seven years ago doesn’t intend to stop now.
On the same day that oil was slated to start moving, Jaike Spotted Wolf joined other Indigenous leaders like Winona LaDuke and Tara Houska on a Zoom call with attorney general Keith Ellison to talk pipeline issues. Photographer Ron Turney presented pictures of cyst-spotted fish to Ellison, which he discovered recently near a pipeline construction site where drilling fluid spilled this summer. Though nontoxic, the fine particles in drilling fluid can negatively impact aquatic life and Enbridge inadvertently released the stuff into wetlands 13 times this summer.
Spotted Wolf is a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, Sahnish) of North Dakota and a leader at Camp Migizi, one of the Indigenous-led resistance camps that cropped up when pipeline construction started. Since January, protestors who call themselves water protectors have traveled there to organize protests, live communally, and learn about decolonization. “The Line 3 fight is very much ingrained in climate protection, but is also about Indigenous sovereignty,” says Spotted Wolf.
Camp Migizi was established on nine wooded acres within the Fond du Lac reservation, right next to a Line 3 construction site. During the summer, flood lights and heavy machinery operated through the night, a continual reminder to those sleeping in tents scattered around the property. “It was just constantly get up and go fight the pipeline,” says Spotted Wolf, who arrived in May.
The pipeline replaces Enbridge’s old eroding Line 3, built in the 1950s and infamous for spilling 1.7 million gallons of crude oil near Grand Rapids in 1991. The new pipeline will have twice the operating capacity, upping the flow to 760,000 barrels carried from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin and across treaty lands every day.
Some projections estimate the pipeline will produce more greenhouse gases annually than Minnesota's total emissions across every sector.
Like other nearby tribal nations, the Fond du Lac Band opposed Enbridge's pipeline replacement proposal. Eventually, Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission presented Fond du Lac with the choice between having the old Line 3 removed from the reservation and the replacement laid in its place or for the replacement pipeline to run just south of the reservation in treaty territory where tribal members hunt, fish and gather. "All remaining options threaten the environment for all and livelihood of the Indigenous people of Minnesota," said tribal council Chair Kevin Dupuis Sr. at the time.
Enbridge maintains that the new pipeline, built with thicker steel and more advanced protective coatings, is safe. “Line 3 was developed and executed with the most state-of-the-art approach to design, construction and environmental management," CEO Al Monaco said last week in a press release. Opponents remain on edge, pointing to a report by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency showing that Enbridge spilled drilling fluid at least 28 times this summer, spurring an investigation for potential violations of their permit.
Concern among activists was also stoked by news that Enbridge pierced a groundwater aquifer in Clearwater, which resulted in a 24-million-gallon groundwater leak and went unreported for months. “Enbridge's actions are a clear violation of state law, and also of the public trust," said Barb Naramore, deputy commissioner at the DNR, who fined Enbridge $3.3 million for the incident. The fee included $250,000 for wetland monitoring as the rupture threatens to dry out two rare and protected wetland areas.
The Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa) came to present-day Minnesota following a vision of “the food that floats on water”. Wild rice, or manoomin, remains essential to Anishinaabe culture and plays a key role in a lawsuit pending against Line 3. In the Manoomin vs. Minnesota DNR case, the White Earth Nation argues that the DNR endangered the treaty-protected plant by granting Enbridge a permit to remove 5 billion gallons of water from wetlands this summer. Treaties made 1837, 1854, and 1855 ensure the right to gather and subsist off of wild rice. This novel lawsuit lists manoomin as the lead plaintiff.
“This action is about upholding manoomin’s right to exist and flourish as established by tribal law, and about Minnesota’s legal obligations pursuant to the Treaties signed,” stated Frank Bibeau, a tribal lawyer of the White Earth Nation.
As Line 3 cuts across 75 miles of wetlands, the impacts of a potential spill haunt pipeline opponents. “This won’t be like the oil spills seen in the ocean, where you can kind of keep it collected. The fact that this is tar sands oil is a different story altogether,” says Spotted Wolf. Sticky and thick with sand, tar sands oil behaves differently than crude oil and sinks to the bottom of waterways. Line 3 snakes across hundreds of freshwater bodies, including a pass under the Mississippi Headwaters where the massive southbound river starts as a trickling stream. “It will seep into the ecology and damage it to an extent where you cannot recover.”
Nearly 900 hundred people, including Spotted Wolf, were arrested during dozens of protests staged along the pipeline route this year. Protestors fastened themselves to machinery, created human blockades in front of access points and employed similar tactics to halt or delay construction for even a few hours. Many received gross misdemeanor charges and at least 80 face felony charges. Most cases hang in limbo due to a lack of public defenders in the northern counties where protests took place.
“We have had a lot of disgust come at us, from community members and people who are pro-pipeline because it's bringing in all this money.” says Spotted Wolf. Construction of the 330-mile Minnesota portion of the pipeline did employ 4,200 people, including a few hundred Native American workers. But now that it’s built, an estimated 20 permanent pipeline jobs will remain in the state. Enbridge also poured money into communities along the proposed route pre-construction, spending more on lobbying than anyone else in Minnesota in 2017, 2018, and 2019. “We don’t benefit after the pipe is in the ground and the employees are paid.”
Some water protectors came to the Line 3 fight straight from Standing Rock where they protested the Dakota Access Pipeline. Without no more Line 3 construction to obstruct, activists are keeping an eye on other developing pipeline projects, like Enbridge’s Line 5 in Michigan which runs across the Upper Peninsula and through the Bad River Band of Ojibwe’s reservation. The Band sued Enbridge to remove the aging pipeline in 2019 and in 2020, Michigan’s Governor ordered the shut down of Line 5, though Enbridge has refused and plans to move forward with a reroute.
As daylight wanes and colder temperatures arrive in northern Minnesota, Camp Migizi is focused on winterizing with the intention of making the camp a permanent base for water protectors. “There of course has been grief and sadness,” Spotted Wolf says about the pipeline going live, “I think there's some cognitive dissonance in the activists that have been out here all summer long being like, ‘Wait what, it's happening?’”
“I’m dealing with it by pushing ahead,” says Spotted Wolf who heads to Washington, D.C. this week to join a week of action planned at the capitol. “I have no choice but to fight because I’m Indigenous and I want my nieces and nephews and my brothers and sisters to thrive.”
A long legacy of resistance to resource extraction exists in Minnesota where industries like logging and iron ore mining are inextricably tied to the state’s identity. In recent history, the resistance has won certain battles, like the one against Enbridge’s Sandpiper Pipeline. As stated in a Star Tribune article, the company canceled the pipeline in 2016 due to “Extensive and unprecedented [regulatory] delays [which] have plagued the Sandpiper pipeline.”
Winona LaDuke, a leader in the Sandpiper and Line 3 opposition released a statement responding to news of the pipeline becoming operational: “Line 3 is a crime against the environment and Indigenous rights, waters and lands, and it marks the end of the tar sands era—but not the end of the resistance to it. Enbridge has raced to build this line before the Federal court has passed judgment on our appeals about the line, but the people have: We believe the most expensive tar sands oil pipeline ever built in the U.S. will be the last.”
