The time thieves: Most of these individuals are charged with misdemeanor trespass charges, but a few are even charged with theft. In this case, stealing time from Enbridge.
This month, nearly 300 Line 3 protesters will have court dates in Hubbard County alone. Water protectors face over $3 million in fines, about the same as the state fine to Enbridge for busting a hole in an aquifer and destroying groundwater.
The time thieves
This month, nearly 300 Line 3 protesters will have court dates in Hubbard County alone.
Written By: Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth | 9:00 am, Jan. 14, 2022
Activists are escorted out of an Enbridge Line 3 pump station after being arrested near Park Rapids, Minn., on June 7, 2021. Photo: Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio/AP
Come Jan. 16, some 140 people are going to be arraigned in Hubbard County for the crime basically of being a water protector.
Most of these individuals are charged with misdemeanor trespass charges, but a few are even charged with theft. In this case, stealing time from Enbridge.
Time thieves. That’s a felony theft charge.
Water protectors face over $3 million in fines, about the same as the state fine to Enbridge for busting a hole in an aquifer and destroying groundwater.
This month, nearly 300 defendants will have court dates in Hubbard County alone, where officials used “pain compliance” torture methods against peaceful demonstrators, some of whom now face permanent disabilities – and up to 11 years in prison.
If this is not a world gone mad, we don’t want to see it.
One district court judge is considering a legal brief he requested on dismissing charges “in the interest of justice.” Let’s hope judicial reasoning prevails.
But who is the real criminal here?
Enbridge is committing a crime of the century, the theft of water from Akiing, this land and water, and the destruction of water. The one-year anniversary of Enbridge's breach of the aquifer in Clearwater County is coming in late January.
After reportedly millions spent trying to stop the leak, it’s still gushing anywhere from 100,000 to 1.2 million gallons or more of artesian water daily in the Mississippi headwaters watershed! There is no word yet about any subsequent prosecution or how a $3.3 million fine was set and how it’s being enforced.
The good water is still pouring out after Enbridge violated the construction permit and drilled the bedrock 10-feet below their approved plan.
This same company burned 28 rivers and nearby wetlands with fracking fluids and secured the single largest allocation of water in the history of the state, 5 billion gallons, during the deepest drought we have seen in our lifetimes. Really appalling, as is the company backing its water trucks up to the Park Rapids city well and depleting more water so it could drill under the Shell River.
2021 was a hell of a year alright! Enbridge, the foreign multinational, occupied and ransacked northern Minnesota to put in a tar sands pipeline at the end of the fossil fuel era.
It imported 4,300 workers, (over two thirds from out of state) and occupied the north in six heavily militarized construction spreads, forcing water protectors to the front lines. There they stood peacefully. They sang, prayed, and played piano (seven people and a piano were arrested in Hubbard County last winter).
We faced police, brutal temperatures and increasingly violent arrests. In the siege of a militarized north during a pandemic, government officials bowed to a Canadian corporation and Line 3 was completed this fall. As we watch the catastrophe of climate change unfold, no one gets a tiara for this pipeline.
In the meantime, most other pipeline projects have been canceled as investors flee the dirty oil of Alberta, Canada, and the destructive nature of pipelines becomes more apparent: the Jordan Cove pipeline, Keystone, and the Constitution Pipeline did not get built. Two of those pipelines were Canadian – that’s what the country exports these days, dirty oil pipelines. But it’s finally the end of the party for tar sands pipelines, even as Enbridge seems to have the last hurrah here.
Enbridge has left Minnesota in a legal and moral quagmire and deepened divisions across the area. Although it is required by law to have a decommissioning plan, prior to installing the pipeline, it seems it has none.
Sadly, Hubbard County exemplifies what we often call the Deep North. On any given day in December, 38% of the people in jail in Hubbard County were Native; Native people comprise around 2% of the population. That’s a stat only the Deep North could produce, as my haters numbers shoot up substantially.
Like fellow water protectors, I must wonder why we\re facing criminal charges for protecting the water, and a foreign corporation which is poisoning our water is not considered an eco-terrorist, and a time thief, taking time and natural resources from our future generations.
But more than that, the company should face the deep criminal charge of ecocide – the destruction of ecosystems.
Meanwhile, back in Park Rapids, Enbridge has sold its office and moved back to Alberta to count profits. I’m going to stick around and keep calling Minnesota and Hubbard County to task for selling out water, treaties, and the civil rights of water protectors to a foreign interest.
It’s time, though, to prosecute the real criminals.
Related Articles:
PROSECUTORS HIT ANTI-PIPELINE PROTESTERS WITH FELONY CHARGES TO SEND A MESSAGE, DEFENSE SAYS: One county prosecutor asked oil company Enbridge for reimbursement to help with some of the prosecutions clogging up rural courts.
Prosecutor Sought Funding From Oil Giant Enbridge to Jail Line 3 Water Protectors: Report - "First the police, now the prosecutors—who's next to violate constitutional rights of water protectors and ask Big Oil to pay for it?"
The felony theft charges, which have been levied in several counties, are prosecutorial overkill, said Joshua Preston, an attorney representing at least 35 defendants. "They are intended to have a chilling effect - to discourage people from engaging in protest."
The March 6 Water Protector Defendant Gathering near Palisade Minnesota
Arrests in Aitkin County and charges are increasing, but in early March, 70 people were arrested in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, charged with Unlawful Assembly as they gathered to commemorate the largest oil spill in history in a March 3 gathering. The spill was the LaPrairie River Spill of an Enbridge line, in l99l. The spill sent l.7 million gallons of tar sands spewing into the river.
Photo by Keri Pickett
The March 6 Water Protector Defendant Gathering near Palisade Minnesota brought almost two hundred Minnesotans together to celebrate spring, in a festive and yet sobering convening.
Charged across the north country, clergy, school teachers. Grandmothers and college students gathered, shared their reasons for getting arrested, and as the trumpeter swans return to the north by the thousands, they land on fields, lakes, and rivers in the complex and biodiverse north.
The lakes, and rivers still frozen, come alive as the birds return, excited to land in their old nesting grounds. With the abrupt and early change from a deep winter to springtime temperatures of 50 degrees, the maple syrup season is just beginning. Water protectors joined with Anishinaabe in tapping the trees.
The Anishinaabe are known maple syrup and sugar producers, at one point, the Keewenaw Bay reservation produced over 463,000 pounds of maple sugar in one year- exceeding by far, most production in the largest operations in Minnesota and Wisconsin today.
Joe Hill and his chief competitor Paul DeMain.
The Welcome Water Protector Center also hosted a friendly, and deep historic competition of the Snow Snake Races carried out on a track of about l50 yards parallel to the Mississippi. The traditional game (video) has been played by northern nations, and in this round included a robust competition between Oneida and Seneca competitors including the renowned Joe Hill and his chief competitor Paul DeMain and Dan Ninham.
The game is making a big come back up north.
“This is a medicine game, we get out in the winter, and sometimes we throw for people in need, thinking about them as we send the snakes,” Joe explains.
On a more serious note over l70 people have been charged with misdemeanor offenses for opposing Line 3, the controversial Canadian mega project. Arrests in Aitkin County and charges are increasing, but in early March, 70 people were arrested in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, charged with Unlawful Assembly as they gathered to commemorate the largest oil spill in history in a March 3 gathering.
The spill was the LaPrairie River Spill of an Enbridge line, in l99l. The spill sent l.7 million gallons of tar sands spewing into the river.
Minnesotans downstream including the Twin Cities ( whose water comes from the Mississippi) were saved by a layer of ice on the water. Spill clean-up consisted of a squeegee and a burn-off.
At that commemoration, Itasca County Sheriffs Department, Northern Lights Task Force, Department of Natural Resources and Highway Patrol corralled Water Protectors who were present, citing seventy.
Water Protectors who gathered today included those charged in Grand Rapids and many charged in incidents in Hubbard and Aitkin County. Legal observers are questioning whether Enbridge is incentivizing arrests and police escalation. With the corporation reimbursing police agencies through an escrow account, reimbursements for overtime hours are increasing. And, there’s equipment to go with it. The intercept reports “
MINNESOTA SHERIFF’S OFFICE has requested that the tar sands pipeline company Enbridge reimburse the department for nearly $72,000 worth of riot gear and more than $10,000 in “less than lethal” weapons and ammunition, including tear gas, pepper spray, bean bag and sponge rounds, flash-bang devices, and batons. The sheriff’s office of Beltrami County, which sits at the center of an Indigenous-led fight to stop the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline replacement project, labeled the weapons as “personal protective equipment.”
The invoices, some of which were first described by the blog Healing Minnesota Stories, await review by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. The agency maintains an escrow account set up so that Enbridge can reimburse public safety agencies for expenses associated with Line 3 construction, especially costs for policing protests. In its construction permit, the utilities commission clarified that the fund
“may not be used to reimburse expenses for equipment, except for personal protective gear for public safety personnel.” The commissioners did not define the term “personal protective gear.”
“I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination batons could be considered PPE — or grenades,” said Tara Houska, an organizer with the anti-Line 3 Giniw Collective. “Those are obviously militarized equipment to be used to subdue and oppress the Indigenous people and allies that are resisting this project from going through our territory.”
Constitutional Rights Violations
As the Enbridge pipeline continues to move ahead, the company’s influence on local governments exceeds that of just law enforcement. In early February, Water Protectors and residents of the town of Palisade were told that they could not have a lawful assembly in Palisade. The Just Transition Celebration was barred from the use of county parks. A letter from The Center for Protest Law to County Commissioners and the sheriff on February 3, 2021.
“ Your offices have unlawfully attempted to deprive Ms. LaDuke, Ms. Matteson, Ms. Spolarich and Ms. Aubid and others of their lawful rights to assemble on public land and, by statements and the inclusion of the County Sheriff Daniel Guida in the chain of communications, have conveyed a threat to arrest persons who may peaceably assemble as intended.
In a shocking and outrageous pattern of retaliation, harassment, bias and discrimination, Sheriff Guida and Aitkin County directly threatened arrest against Ms. Matteson, a resident of Palisade, in response to her efforts to obtain authorization to hold an educational and religious event in a public park, and then used their police and prosecutorial powers to punitively issue multiple count charges against Ms. LaDuke, Ms. Aubid and others seeking to imprison and fine them for peaceful activities on treaty lands.”
Enbridge’s pipeline costs are increasing dramatically, the company announcing $l billion in additional costs (“from Minnesota regulatory complications) in mid-February. The cost escalations have been in Minnesota, with legal cases filed by tribes. Organizations and the state to oppose the pipeline and hundreds of water protectors standing in the way of pipeline construction, several days a week. Enbridge’s most expensive project in history, the pipeline faces an uncertain future on the ground and certainly in oil markets, as companies flee the tar sands. Facing increasing costs and concerns, Enbridge appears to be increasing the pressure on law enforcement officials to protect the pipeline project.
“if this was such a good idea, why would they need so many police?” Good question.
As spring comes to the north country, the swans return home- waabiziiwag azh-igiwewag, and as they return north, the skies fill with joyful sounds and the lakes and biodiversity protected by the Water Protectors seems eternal. Enbridge is hoping the pipeline will proceed easily, but this spring will likely bring not only swans but thousands of more water protectors to the north.
Camping is good, and it’s COVID safe.
Winona LaDuke Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, is an economist, environmentalist, activist, hemp farmer, author, and former Green Party VP candidate with Ralph Nader. She lives on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota
To Be A Water Protector
The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers
PAPERBACK $25.00
Winona LaDuke is a leader in cultural-based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy, sustainable food systems and Indigenous rights. To Be a Water Protector, explores issues that have been central to her activism for many years — sacred Mother Earth, our despoiling of Earth and the activism at Standing Rock and opposing Line 3.
For this book, Winona discusses several elements of a New Green Economy and the lessons we can take from activists outside the US and Canada. In her unique way of storytelling, Winona LaDuke is inspiring, always a teacher and an utterly fearless activist, writer and speaker.
This book is written in the spirit of acknowledging that Water is Life. This book is a testimony of the resistance and defeat of the Wiindigoo. The term, “Water Protector,” became mainstream under a hail of rubber bullets at Standing Rock. This book is about that spirit, and that spirit is forever.
I am pairing this book “To Be a water Protector,” with my Louis Riel Coffee - the coffee of the resistance with a 16 0z Ceramic Travel Mug. Make this a holiday gift for a friend, and I will sign the book. Join me in the reading, and during these times of winter, stay warm, drink coffee, and join the New Green Revolution.