Photos by Kerem Yucel/AFP (Winona LaDuke) and Christian Bertrand (Justin Vernon)
Winona LaDuke and Justin Vernon
On Wednesday afternoon at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth, Bon Iver is headlining Water is Life, a concert organized by Winona LaDuke’s Honor the Earth, to support Stop Line 3 efforts. Line 3 is the $9 billion dollar oil pipeline that’s being built by Enbridge, the Canadian-based multinational oil company, that will sluice through 337 miles of Minnesota wilderness connecting the oil sands of Alberta to terminal center on Lake Superior.
It’s been a long summer for LaDuke, who’s been arrested multiple times during protests along the pipeline, and with construction of the pipeline nearly finished, the concert is serving as a Hail Mary attempt to raise awareness about the stakes of this struggle and just what can still be done. On Monday night, I moderated a discussion between LaDuke, Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, and festival organizers David Huckfelt, Sara Boots, and Kaesha Baloch. Watch the full conversation and read a partial transcript of the conversation.
Steve Marsh: So Winona, the last time I saw you was on the number 40 bridge over the Mississippi River, somewhere way above Park Rapids, in March. And you were in a bear costume. And it was cold, but ice was just coming off the lakes and streams, and it was beautiful up there. And you seemed hopeful. I asked you how things are going with your fight against Line 3, and the analogy you gave was we're at halftime right now. So now that it’s August, would you use another sports analogy? Can you tell us the state of play with the Line 3 three project right now?
Winona LaDuke: I'm really not that much for sports, maybe lacrosse or something. But look, what I feel like is that Enbridge has played the state very well—they've played the state. They've added five billion gallons of water for $150, they got 700 people arrested, they militarized the north heavily, they’ve divided communities, including tribal communities. They had, I think 28, maybe 30 frack-outs, frying some rivers in northern Minnesota. And looks like they got the Walz administration to believe that the 4,300 people that were going to work for us—although about 3,500 of them were out of state—was a really good idea.
So they gamed Walz, too, and they took the north and I got to give them a thumbs up for their excellent gamesmanship, if that's what you want. They gamed us well. We're not in a good situation, the people and the water, I mean. It's the worst drought in known history. It's the largest water appropriation in the history of the state of Minnesota without any review. And I'm hanging on like this [makes a gesture of hooking her fingers over the top of a wall.] And I think the rest of us should be too because you actually wanted the system to work and it doesn't look good out there, it looks kind of hot.
And so we're fighting, we got a federal court decision and we got a tribal court decision coming up and we'll see what the courts look like. But it all boils down on the side of the water, not on the side of the Canadian multinational, so I'm going to hang in here. I'm going to hang in here because I think we're worth it.
Steve: So it sounds like a backs-against-the-wall scenario. Has there been correspondence with Governor Walz or President Biden?
Winona: We have tried pretty much every measure. I was hoping someone will pull a lever someplace, like maybe do an environmental impact statement because they never did a federal environmental impact statement. I thought that might be a good idea. Maybe someone could just figure out what they're going to do with the water like they flushed through the line into the Superior Basin from probably North Dakota or something. It's like a regulatory insanity. So we’ve talked to the Biden Administration and the Walz Administration.
And we did have meetings with the Army Corps of Engineers and I've got to say, someone should do something because you can't pretend you're a climate president and approve a pipeline worth 50 new coal fire powerplants. Can't do that. No one gets a tiara for this pipeline. It's a bad idea, it's the worst idea imaginable now. And so we're going to stand here and we're just really glad that Justin is coming in and all these musicians, and just so grateful that people come and fill our little hearts up with joy and music, because we're actually all about that world. We like the music and the art and the love and the water. That's our world, we aren't the other world.
And as you did probably hear, they tried to close down our cool concert, too, and they put 700 people in jail and were telling people that we shouldn't be able to have a concert either. No music, go to jail. But thankfully, Justin's coming up and we're not going to jail, we're going to get some music.
Steve: So for both Justin and David and Winona and whoever wants to take this one, what good can this concert do on Wednesday night? What is best-case scenario for the day after the Wednesday night show?
Justin Vernon: Well, I think that awareness is huge. I love what Winona said about hanging on, because I think these issues have been going back decades. My first Honor the Earth concert, by the way, was when I was 16 years old, went to see that in the Twin Cities, and so I've been aware of this stuff my whole life. But I think in other ways, folks in my position, or white folks, or just folks that aren't paying attention maybe to certain things because they might not feel like they need to, I think now feels like the most important time.
If you read the UN reports, they're not saying much different than what they've been saying for 30 years, but I think everyone's feeling the heat, quite literally. And this is just one major fight, but when I think empathetically about where people are at in their lives, and certain issues come up about this pipeline, there's a lot of things that come up, like jobs or these things that are easy to pinpoint. But I think they're the easy answers. And I don't think that they ask the main question which is, what are we doing here? And what does this really affect? And our number one common denominator between all of us on earth, and in this region, is our land, our water, and our earth under our feet.
And I get nervous with getting my face on the screen, but I didn't bat an eye on this, because I don't think there's anything more important than this. And I want people to listen. To answer your question, Steve, sorry to ramble, but I hope Governor Walz hears us. I hope he hears this right now. And I know that a lot of people are coming up for the concert, but I hope a lot of people come out educated, and not only educated, but moved and inspired to do something and to use their voice.
Steve: David or Sara, who is going to be in the crowd? Who's going to come up and see this thing? Is it mostly Duluth people? Is it people from northern Minnesota? Is it city people? And who is going to be on stage, and how are those two things related?
David Huckfelt: Steve, I think that all are welcome and it's all of our water that we are protecting and celebrating. We really truly do mean it. Justin was the first person that I asked and the first person that said yes, immediately. And for that, we're grateful because from there, I mean, I've seen some comments online, some people are surprised that Charlie Parr or Lissie would play a Stop Line 3 Concert. There's no reason to be surprised if you've heard their music. And the support from artists is vast, massive.
And this intersection of art, music, and activism it reminds me of John Trudell, who is a huge mentor and a leader, a groundbreaker. And he told me one time, he said, "Everybody will tell you that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results." He said, "That's not all of it though, because I think about alchemy. We do the same thing: we show up, we bring our creativity, our ideas, our passion, we do it again and again and again until the conditions are right and then everything changes."
So on Wednesday, I think there'll be people from all over the region. It's hard to get to Duluth on short notice on a Wednesday for everybody, we knew that. But what you're going to see is we erased the genres, things like border walls and fences are fake, anyway. There's no fences in music, they're not real. So this coalition of Native artists and independent artists, this used to happen a lot with Neil Young and John Trudell and back in the day, Floyd Westerman and Buffy Sainte-Marie. But I feel like it's been a while, and so we're trying to bring that back and make everybody feel super welcome. You can love the music. Come for the music and stay for the water as what Winona said, and I think that's right on.
Steve: Winona, I had that double Honor the Earth album. And Justin is a huge Indigo Girls guy. I saw them for the first time at his Eaux Claires Festival a few years ago, and man, I loved them so much. So when you started this thing in the mid '90s, what was your vision for including artists in this mission? How do artists help, and why work with musicians? There's a history there that David just pointed out, but why specifically did you start this relationship?
Winona: I'm trying to figure out when this started. I was active in the anti-nuclear movement at a young age, 17, 18, 19. I was working on Uranium Mining at Navajo and Jackson Brown and Bonnie Raitt and John Trudell and Kris Kristofferson came out to the Navajo Rez and put some attention on us and helped us, and made us feel a lot better hanging out with them. We got to hear their music and they really believed in us.
So there's this history of musicians who are doing the right thing and artists who were doing the right thing. And I was raised in this community. My mother's an artist, so I want to be with the team that has the vision and the courage and the beauty to change the world. I don't want to listen to a bunch of guys with dumb ideas trying to make a buck. I want to be about your heart and your spirit. And so that's what Honor the Earth's always been about. And we're formed out of that love. The Indigo Girls and myself and the founding mothers, and we work with a lot of musicians, had a lot of privilege in that. And so this, we've been having shows in Duluth for a number of years, this is by far the biggest.
And I have to be really grateful to Sara and David and Kaesha for putting this together because I feel like I'm coming into something really cool. I'm going to be part of it, and a whole bunch of people are. And it's really a beautiful thing to be able to bring this music to the water. There are so many people happy to hear this. These are strange times, and they're also times of opportunity. The pandemic should change us, so this is a time to do something great.
Steve: Justin, I don't think you'd bring this stuff up about yourself, so I'm going to put you on a spot for just a second. But you've amassed some real experience as an activist in the last 10 years. Just recently, you had the 2 A Billion initiative that helped survivors of domestic violence, using a percentage of your publishing money to go towards that. And then you converted the human infrastructure of the Eaux Claires Festival into this Get Out the Vote Initiative in your home state of Wisconsin. And now, you're contributing to this concert on Wednesday night. So what have you learned about how effective your voice can be as an activist?
Justin: Thanks, Steve. I think I use activist with a lowercase “a.” That’s the main thing. But what I think I've learned over my whole life, I guess, as a songwriter, as a musician, is that I didn't go to music to make a living at it—I really wasn't in it to do anything but move people. And I think that with music, there’s an industry, they call it the music industry. And not to poo on anybody's dreams of being a pop star or anything like that, but I think that art and commerce, they aren't really friends necessarily. They might go hand in hand sometimes.
I also really wasn't trying to become a semi-famous person—my fame also is lowercase “f,” it's in this middle ground. But I've never really stopped thinking that art has the ability to move and change people's hearts. These conversations are one thing, philosophical debates in town halls are one thing, politics are one thing, but the reason why I'm here, and why I can't really stop doing what I do is because I just have this feeling. It's more than a belief, it's a feeling in me that seems like we are all so similar and we share so much, and we need to come together to save our environment, to save our earth from total annihilation. And that's on its way. And that's what I care about and I don't really care about anything else.
Steve: Somebody that Justin introduced me to, my friend, Lee Taylor, she's in an outfit called the Resistance Revival Chorus. And she just walked along the entire Line 3 with the Ojibwe elder, Sharon Day, a Minneapolis lady. And I think that you can reach so many people who are going to be at Bayfront Festival Park on Wednesday night, but there's so many people that their hearts have hardened against this cause, and their hearts have hardened towards the people leading this cause. Lee was saying that she was horrified as they were praying and walking by the water, to see golf balls thrown out of pickup trucks at little Native American kids.
And just the amount of invective and hate that's poured out towards the people leading this. It can't just be because they're listening to Enbridge ads on country music stations, can it? What's driving the invective and the anger, and what can we do to reach people who so vehemently oppose your message?
Justin: If I may, Steve, I think about this very often. I think about my own nostalgia, and I think about when something comes for that nostalgia and wants to change it, I know that I get really uncomfortable. And when people get used to things, they find security and that's what we're looking for, right? We're looking for shelter and security and a way of life, right? It's the American way. And that all really makes sense to me. What's tough is that I think when we get insecure, when we can't see past our own safety and our own security and our own luxury, we get afraid and we get insecure and we feel hurt.
And I think that hurt people hurt people. It’s what I've always heard, and I think it's true. And I think, again, this is why I'm back in the music thing, it's just trying to spread that love molecule, trying to show each other that we're trying to really be on earth together.
Winona: I feel like a lot of people want a way out. That's what I think. It is the deep north up here for sure, but we didn't need someone to come in here and make it worse and encourage that kind of division. I'm fully aware of how people look at me in some towns. Some people come love me and some people flip me off. And I was like, I'm just a woman who wants some water. And so what I feel like is that a lot of people appreciate our water up north. They'd like to have an electric car, there's people that would like to have a way out where you didn't have to have a bunch of energy from North Dakota. And a lot of people here, I think the pandemic also taught us to think about what we value.
And so I'm hoping this music can help bring us together. To share that we could make a better future together and we don't need a Canadian multinational to tell us what our future should look like. So that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping that this will show that we're big. And I know that Enbridge is like, look what we did to the water protectors, we're pretty proud of ourselves. Well, I'm not proud of them. And I don't think Minnesota should be proud of what they'd done to us. I'm facing charges in three counties, and I think that's wrong. I'm a water protector, I'm not a criminal. But you know what, I think that Minnesota is going to need to reckon and heal.
And I'm all ready to face the next polluter, because I think we should be done. And besides that, I'm all ready for the next economy, a way with peace, where trees are maple sugar and not lumber.
Steve: It's impossible to actually read the UN's climate report. Evidently, it's very, very dry reading, but there are some real startling facts in there about how our temperatures on this planet right now are hotter than they've been in the last 125,000 years, and that we're basically royally fucked by 2090 if we don’t change things now. And those numbers are so huge and so beyond human scale that it becomes discouraging. It's like, "Oh, man, what can I even do about that? I'm not even going to be around in 2090. And I wasn't alive 125,000 years before this when things were cold."
So what are some concrete things that we can achieve in the next year, or the next couple years? When people get home safely from this concert on Wednesday night, what can they start thinking about to help make things better? Winona, you've been at this fight a long time, you were anti-nuclear power early in your career as an activist. What about now, have you changed your thoughts about what can get us to that next economy? What should we be for?
Winona: Well, we should be for hemp and cannabis. You know why? Because hemp sequesters carbon. You could get away from concrete if you have hemp, and make hempcrete. So we call that the new green revolution. There's far more money in that than there is in oil, and we can grow it. What if you could grow your future? And a lot more local food, a lot more renewable energy and just waste a lot less. What if we all just quit being so dang stupid?
We all look like the Pillsbury Doughboy now because we eat too much, so how about we just move along? You know who's the largest energy consumer in the state of Minnesota? Little fact you learn when you're digging around: it’s Enbridge. Oh, my God, they use more money than Minneapolis. Give me a break. So what if we quit wasting money on stupid ideas and go a little bit more local and maybe have some local food and maybe a little bit more maple syrup and maple sugar. And what if we built some wind turbines in Duluth instead of importing them all from Germany? Or what if we had a bottle washing factory in Superior?
We're all ready. We're all ready for the just transition and we're ready to be of the leadership of indigenous people saying, "Hey, you dummies, don't pick a fight with Mother Earth! You're not going to win." We've been saying that for what, 500 years or something. I was like, "Come on, take a clue." We could do the right thing. This is a good start, the healing. And I'm just so grateful we got this opportunity to listen to some beautiful music, and maybe even a few Trump supporters are going to come and they'll say, "Wow, that's the best music I ever heard."
Kaesha: What can we do when we exit this concert? Have the conversations. Put that music on in the background, turn it down low, enjoy local foods, and talk, and ask the hard questions, and see eye to eye, and come with a loving view to your neighbors. I mean, I look out and I see these posters for our concert—the community and people are supporting it. And if they aren't, we'd love to have the conversation to say, "Come on, come join us."
So really, slow down with the consumerism and jump in to greater connection and conversation that happens through food and that happens through music. I mean, come on, put your dancing shoes on and what are you going to do?
Winona: But you got to stop Line 3.
Kaesha: Yes, you do.
Winona: Call Walz because you don't want to do this to the state, it's wrong. And we got to get to Biden because someone's got to put on their big boy pants out there and stop a stupid project from happening.
Kaesha: We will have information for folks on how to do that, how to contact the administration, and we'll have individuals there answering the questions if someone doesn't feel comfortable. There will be a call to action. Thank you.
David: And Steve, I wanted to mention, too, just to tie it together a little bit, musically speaking, the way that Justin spoke about the power of music or just the feeling of it. These artists on our lineup, they're living and dying by the spirit of music. They hold space for people to come in and accept themselves on a deep level. These are people whose music has changed their lives. Charlie Parr, Alan Sparhawk, Larry Long, Keith Secola, Annie Humphrey, Corey Medina, Dorene Day, Adia Victoria's coming up from the south, Lissie, Quiltman is coming over from Simnasho, Oregon. It's an incredible lineup.
Kaesha: Superior Siren.
David: Superior Siren will be there from Duluth. Several Duluth acts. Music can be local, national, international, interstellar. But I think that what you have to admit is that musicians, like Justin said, their commerce doesn't mix. So what you want to call streaming services, the Enbridge of the music business, we're under attack, too. And we want to stand up for that feeling of, like, the music matters, the spirit matters the same way that our mother earth matters. So really, there's nothing disparate about these causes or these purposes, it really ties together.
And I just want to let everybody know if you're listening, we have tickets available, there's music all day long. Bayfront is a massive space with plenty of room to social distance. I think Bob Dylan put 20,000 people there in 1999 with Paul Simon, so we got the room, and you're all welcome. You're welcome whether you just want to find out what's going on, whether you want to learn who these bands are, whether you want to learn about Line 3, or you just want to show up, you really are welcome. Like Winona said, we are the music people, we're not anti-anything, we're for water and we're for art and for love. So that's my message about this.
Winona: Steve, you asked what we can do after or what people can do after. And I would encourage people to write a list of how many things water exists in in your daily life. Your coffee, your beer, your tea, your food, where do you get food? You have to have water to grow food. You're not going to have food if you don't have water. And then make a list of how many things oil goes into. Your car.
Sara: And then my other suggestion would be, it's going to be 90 degrees or something like that on Wednesday, so after the concert, you should go get in Lake Superior and see what it feels like.
Steve: I love that. Okay.
Winona: Get in that lake.
