Credit Kirk Sidlo
Winter Count - The lake, The river, The drill
by Winona LaDuke
Sandy Lake
We sit on the shore of Sandy Lake. She’s marked on the migration scrolls of the Anishinaabe. She’s a big one, this lake, the place where 400 of the Anishinaabe perished over the winter of l842-1843, when the Great White Father, that would be Zachary Taylor denied treaty rations. They say that there were so many bodies wrapped in birchbark, that the shores were white. That was then.
The lake, and the flowage, from Sandy Lake, are some of the richest waters of the Anishinaabe- full of wild rice, and teeming with fish. The rice, or Manoomin from Sandy Lake Flowage, Minnewawa, are prized, as is the rice from Rice Lake, today called the Rice Lake Refuge. Akiing, the land to which the people belong is half land and half water. Waters deep, shallow filled with rice, sturgeon, and muskies of great lengths, and all the mysteries of the deep waters. Mermaids too. Those are the mysterious and wonderful waters of the north country.
Photo by Edward Iron Cloud III
This is where the wild rice grows, it’s the only place in the world. Each year in succession the Manoomin returns to the waters of the Anishinaabe, providing twice the protein and half the calories of brown rice. It’s the only grain Native to North America.
A couple of years ago, Enbridge forced the Fond du Lac band to make a Deal with the Devil. That’s to say, that the Fond du Lac Tribal Council, led by Chairman Kevin Dupuis, had to choose, which watersheds and sets of lakes he would sacrifice for an Enbridge pipeline. The price tag, rumored to be around $225 million to a tribe fighting a big mine upstream from the reservation, is something to hold on to.
The tribe chose to protect Sandy Lake. That’s because it’s on our migration scrolls, and our people died there as well. So it is that the Enbridge Pipeline project was pushed north- pushed north of Palisade, to the deep woods and wetlands.
The Willow River Enbridge is destroying
The Drill
I don’t know how to describe rape except that‘s what it feels like. That’s what it feels like here. First, there’s the big dozers, and excavators, backhoes, and bunch of fellers. That last one just sort of walks through the forest, beheads a tree, and then drops it to the side, coming back for the rest of the tree after that. It’s violent. Really violent how Enbridge rolls through a forest.
It’s a lot like pillaging a village, maybe a village in Rwanda, or maybe a village in Vietnam. It’s full of hatred.
Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather
Then what’s left are the women. Then they go for the women. Lots of gang rapes, from Kosovo to Sand Creek. The woman is the river. It’s the Mississippi. The Willow River, the Shell River, the Little Shell River, the Crow Wing Rivers. Enbridge and the contractors, most of them from Texas, Utah, Louisiana, and elsewhere, are gunning for the rivers- heading straight towards the rivers. Enbridge wants to complete the River crossings, or the pipes under the rivers, as soon as possible. Enbridge is coming in with something called a High Directional Drill. That’s a drill under the river, like they did at Standing Rock, right there by the Cannonball River. There’s a big set of jamming generators. Those are going to drive this drill under the river. And it’s all really phallic. That’s what it feels like here. Like rape.
In fact, Enbridge would like to get the whole pipeline done and fill up the north country with oil, as quick as it can. Then what happens legally, is that they begin to slut the ecosystem. That’s to say, that there’s a newly introduced legal theory called the degradation principle.
That’s the legal theory that if an ecosystem is already polluted, you don’t have to apply standards like the Clean Drinking Water Act or the Clean Water Act. Sort of like saying if you’ve been raped, you’re no good. And, who cares if you get raped again?
Occupied Palisade
There are about l00 souls who live in Palisade most of the year. It’s a small town, you can be sure most people are related and know each other for a couple of generations back. Welcome to the North Country. There are about 400 workers surrounding Palisade right now, driving big trucks and equipment down windy icy roads. It looks like an occupation. And then there’s the pounding, the pounding of big equipment ripping through the forest and the land. There are about l00 water protectors gathering north of Palisade. They are gathering down by the River. Down by the River to Pray. And, it’s all during a pandemic.
Palisade and Swatara are sort of an unusual neck of the woods. Nestled in the deep woods and muskegs of Aitken County, or the lands of the Chippewa of the Mississippi as we are called, are these small towns. There are also springs, bountiful freshwater springs throughout the area. These towns have seen a lot. A set of proposals from downstate include an experimental city of 250,000; a plasma gasification garbage to energy proposal, a nuclear waste dump, and now a pipeline. It’s just a crazy set of ideas that people come up with from elsewhere. No one really needs it, any of it.
The Pandemic Pipeline
Enbridge wants to get this pipeline done before someone stops them. That’s what this is about. Final approvals on the Water Crossing permits by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency came out in November.
The MPCA set aside any pretext of environmental justice or protection of water quality in sensitive lakes. That was followed by the resignations of l2 of l7 members of that advisory committee. Advisory Board members said.
Then there’s what’s called Corporate Welfare. That’s when the state of Minnesota gives away a bunch of public land to a Canadian corporation. And public waters. The Department of Natural Resources had been busy giving away lots of Minnesota, and lots of Anishinaabe territories. That includes about 630 million gallons of water so that Enbridge can dewater and then flush it’s pipeline with water- moving it across watersheds, with no accounting for the quality or impact. Crazy stuff, add to that the large chunk of Minnesota being laid to waste, and ALL the cops.
That’s corporate welfare at its best, in this case, giving it all away to a Canadian corporation.
Sara Pajunen
What’s the Rush?
They want to have a pipe in the ground and full of oil before the people and the state of Minnesota get a day in court. That‘s the hurry. On August of, 2020, the Minnesota Department of Commerce, the Red Lake, and White Earth Nations filed suit in Minnesota Appellate Court to overturn both the Certificate of Need and the Route Permit. That’s because the math of this pipeline doesn’t work out, financially, and it doesn’t work out for the environment.
One big problem: There’s no plan if Enbridge Oil gets into Lake Superior. There’s no real plan.
And, then there’s the economics, which makes no sense. Companies are fleeing the tar sands, and Enbridge itself is putting 400,000 barrels a day less through its main lines than they did a year ago. They’ve got the Pandemic Pipeline Blues, and it’s the end of the tar sands oil world. So the company wants to sell the last pipeline.
The last Tarsands pipeline. It’s a blue light special on bad infrastructure, and the Walz Administration has taken the bait. While the state needs real infrastructure, like water, sewer and bridges, and such, we’re just getting a big Tar Sands Pipeline.
Time to heal. Time to move on.
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.