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.