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."
What’s tragic about this story is everything: Christmas in Mankato, Dakota 38+2
LaDuke: What’s tragic about this story is everything: Christmas in Mankato
“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”
LaDuke: What’s tragic about this story is everything: Christmas in Mankato, Dakota 38+2
By Winona LaDuke January 12, 2022
“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”
The long ride is easier on horse than on foot. The annual Dakota 38 Plus Two Horse Ride commemorates the Christmas Day hanging of 38 Dakota men at Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862.
Four-thousand Minnesotans came out to watch the hanging, many throwing cold water on the Dakota. Hooded, when the men dropped, it is said they held hands and were singing a Dakota prayer song. Three years later, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, who had fled to Canada, were drugged and brought back to die on the gallows on Nov. 11 at Fort Snelling.
This year, I rode part of that Dakota 38 Ride, from the Fort Thompson Reservation in South Dakota, home of the exiled Dakotas, along long stretches of South Dakota highways to Flandreau reservation, then through the Minnesota River Valley. That river valley has to be one of the most beautiful places in this territory.
Photo by Cyrille Autin
I rode with grandsons and brought a good number of horses for the 230-mile ride. Grueling in the least, and full of prayers, grief, and awe, the lessons learned are unforgettable and deep. I rode with probably 25 young men under 25 and fewer elders.
What’s tragic about this story is everything. Crow Creek and Fort Thompson reservations, set up as prison camps for the exiled Dakotas, still have such great poverty, while Minnesota has never fully acknowledged this crime against humanity and the wealth and lives stolen from the Dakota people.
“We’re riding for all of the exiles and the exiles across this land because almost all Natives can’t live in their own lands anymore. They’re put in a little reservation somewhere, or some of them were relocated to the cities,” Jim Hallum a ride organizer, explained to a reporter.
Those that lost their lives on the gallows were disposed of in a shallow sand grave on a nearby riverbank, some to be dug up shortly thereafter to be dissected as medical cadavers. That’s some dark history Minnesota. And later, when the Walker Art Museum put up a replica of the gallows in 2017, that didn’t make anyone feel like healing had begun.
What do justice, reconciliation look like?
Minnesota Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-District 4, and outgoing Commissioner of Transportation Margaret Kelliher welcomed the riders. They joined 1,000 people who came to honor the horses and riders, and later, runners who came from Fort Thompson. That was a long run, and a long ride, and the food and reception were gracious.
What does justice look like for the Dakota 38 Plus Two? Think of it this way: Dakota land built Minnesota. The 1851 Treaty Territory of the Dakota is 20 miles wide along the Minnesota River Valley. Then came encroachments like New Ulm and lots of greed from land speculators. The Treaty of l851 transferred land to the U.S., and with the passage of the July 1862 Morrill Act, financed a whole list of universities, from the University of Minnesota to Cornell University
Under the act, over 1.2 million acres of land were taken from the Wahpekuta-Medewakanton, Wahpeton and Sisseton bands, representing the largest land theft by universities in the country. Some 35 universities secured land under the Act, which was passed just before the “Dakota uprising” in July of 1862. 1.2 million acres for $33,000.
Nice land speculating: All you have to do is exile the people who belong to the land and conduct the largest mass hanging in history.
What does reconciliation look like? The University of Minnesota recently announced a tuition waiver for Native students, largely because the university was built on these ill-begotten gains. The tuition waiver begins at all campuses in 2022.
“For 170 years, our University has focused attentively on the needs of all Minnesotans. Today we are taking a positive step forward in addressing the needs of indigenous peoples with a history that predates this state and institution,” said university president Joan Gabel. Honestly, it seems like a tuition waiver 160 years later is a bit cheap.
Oren Lyons, a great Onondaga chief always reminds us that “the only compensation for land is land.” Minnesota has a clear moral mandate to return land through land back movements and state and federal transfers to Native peoples. South and North Dakota do as well
With the recent passing of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I am reminded of his words: “I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.” This next year marks the 120th anniversary of the hanging. That seems like an auspicious time to make a real reconciliation. Many of the young men who rode 230 miles to Mankato this Christmas were about the age of the men who were hung so long ago.
The next generation is coming, just as a new spring will come to the Minnesota River, and with it new grass. Let us strive to be full of hope, love and reconciliation as the seasons surely change.
Indakiingimin, “the land to which the people belong,” the land remembered in our songs and our spirits will sound and rise again when 4,000 people come this time to welcome home the Dakota and to return their land. I believe that will be the beginning of real reconciliation.
The Covenant
Mother Earth is, in the north country, or Giiwedinong, telling us to take a breath, and tell aadizookaan, or sacred stories, take to the arts of weaving, quillwork or maybe just a reflection.
The Covenant
By Winona LaDuke
Mother Earth is, in the north country, or Giiwedinong, telling us to take a breath, and tell aadizookaan, or sacred stories, take to the arts of weaving, quillwork or maybe just a reflection.
In the deepest of winter, is a time to be grateful to listen. Maybe it is the sound of ice cracking on the lake, or the muffle and silence of the snow, burying deep the many things left in the yard.
The harvests are in, and the wood stove needs tending.
Mother Earth is, in the north country, or Giiwedinong, telling us to take a breath, and tell aadizookaan, or sacred stories, take to the arts of weaving, quillwork or maybe just a reflection.
That’s quite a bit different than the teachings of shopping. I, like many, rankle at the overconsumption and find myself returning to the teachings, softness and wonder of a new snowfall. At our core, we don’t live in a shopping mall, or on Amazon. The Amazon is a place in the world, not just a Prime account.
She is a living being, a river and a world.
View from the observation tower of rising mist from the rain forest canopy in the rain forest near La Selva Lodge near Coca, Ecuador. Credit: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images
Jeff Bezos is not protecting the Amazon, he’s headed to space. On Dec. 4, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador ruled that a Canadian mining corporation’s proposal to mine in a protected area violated the rights of nature. Seven justices voted in favor and two abstained.
“[T]he risk in this case is not necessarily related to human beings … but to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles,” Judge Agustín Grijalva Jiménez wrote.
Ecuador’s constitution recognizes the rights of “Pachamama,” or Mother Earth, to exist and to “maintain and regenerate its cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”
In 2008, the country was the first in the world to enshrine the rights of nature in a constitutional document, affording nature the highest form of legal protection.
The legal systems are changing, as legal rights which have been accorded corporations (considered natural persons under the law in the United States) are seen to be not only inequitable, but wrong.
And, indeed, the very foundation of some of American, British and other colonial legal canons is — based on precepts like “Doctrine of Discovery” or “Terra Nullius” (Latin for “empty land”) the idea that no one was in the Amazon, or the Northwoods before a white man showed up — are being turned on their head. Indeed, one only needs to ask the philosophical question “Is a corporation a person?” to come up with the answer. No, a corporation cannot be a person because a person has a soul, and a corporation does not. And, despite the trappings of “regulations” the fact is, that if you cannot drink the water, your regulations are, well, impotent.
The Ecuadorian case is not alone.
On Aug. 5, an action was filed in the White Earth Tribal Court by Manoomin (wild rice), which has legal standing in the Anishinaabe regulatory system.
That’s the same as Ecuador. Manoomin versus Minnesota DNR alleges that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources violated the rights of the wild rice in the 1855 treaty territory and beyond, when the DNR allocated Enbridge 5 billion gallons of water from our then parched land, to provide Enbridge with enough water to drill our rivers, and contaminate them.
The fact is an aquifer breached in Clearwater County (l00,000 gallons of water a day are gushing out of the hole Enbridge made), and we have no idea how much water they’ve used.
And, it appears that the state of Minnesota does not care. This is the first case brought in a tribal court to enforce the rights of nature, and the first rights of nature case brought to enforce treaty guarantees.
PROVIDED BY RON TURNEY A closeup showed standing water in the wetlands being held back from the Mississippi River in Clearwater County, where the Line 3 oil pipeline tunneled under the river.
In December 2018, the White Earth Tribal Council adopted a “rights of manoomin” law. The law begins:
“Manoomin, or wild rice, within all the Chippewa ceded territories, possesses inherent rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation.” Indeed, attorney Dale Greene Jr. said, “It’s logical to give rights to plants, animals and the natural world, because the Ojibwe worldview holds that everything in nature is a spiritual being, and there is an acknowledged relationship with humans. “I sometimes call it a covenant,” he said. “They’re providing life to us. It just makes perfect sense that it’s a living, providing, spiritual being, in the form of water or food.”
This is how the world changes. Legal and regulatory systems set up to strengthen corporations and take from Mother Earth are being challenged internationally. And, as surely as slavery, which was once legal is abhorred. The world is changing.
In this time remember the words of the great Indian writer, Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
“Mother Earth is, in the north country, or Giiwedinong, telling us to take a breath, and tell aadizookaan, or sacred stories, take to the arts of weaving, quillwork or maybe just a reflection.”
Enbridge, Columbus, and the last tar sands pipeline by Winona LaDuke
Approaching this day for uplifting Indigenous peoples, here's a suggestion. It's time to end conquest and begin survival. Code Red for the environment means that we need to move away from fossil fuels and to organic agriculture, and to local and efficient energy. Fortunately, tribal nations are leading the way in the north. It's time to quit acting like Columbus.
Enbridge, Columbus, and the last tar sands pipeline
The pipeline is colonialism at work in the 21st century, but water protectors are making waves.
By Winona LaDuke
It's somehow fitting irony as Indigenous Day approaches on Oct. 11 — once known by another name — that a new Columbus is about to pump oil through Line 3, the last tar sands pipeline. That is the colonial-like corporation Enbridge.
Maybe President Joe Biden will think about this one and stop the dirty oil from burning our rivers and air. The Indian wars could be over. After all, no one needs this pipeline, plus it's the dirtiest and most expensive oil in the world to extract and produce.
In one narrative, the Canadian corporation won. Columbus conquered anew, proof that might and money remain the rulers.
Then, there's another.
That's the Ballad of the Water Protectors — a movement born in the battles in northern Minnesota and North Dakota, a movement that will grow and transform the economy of the future.
How do we know this? Well, no one wants to finance more tar sands. Other telling signs, and some new red flags, include:
The Canadian oil industry estimated that a lack of pipeline capacity reduced the industry's income by tens of billions of dollars before the pandemic started. The tar sands industry couldn't afford to approve and build new extraction facilities during the curtailment, and now, in part due to the pandemic, it still can't.
Uncertainty about Line 3 caused by Indigenous people and water protectors encouraged massive divestment from the tar sands by non-Canadian investors. Everybody from Shell Oil to the Koch brothers bailed out. Last month, my alma mater, Harvard University, began divestment of fossil fuels. Harvard wouldn't even divest from South Africa, those stubborn old dudes. This is, well, monumental.
A recent joint report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International, found that Indigenous resistance alone has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least 25% of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.
As a result of low oil prices, reduced income and divestment, tar sands industry capital expenditures crashed. Almost all its capital spending over the past five years was used for maintenance of existing extraction facilities, not development of new facilities.
Put another way, the pipeline opposition campaign stopped the tar sands industry dead in its tracks.
We all just recently learned two more blatant things about Enbridge that should give everyone pause — especially our government leaders like Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, whose cowardly silence makes them complicit in this egregious crime.
First, after piercing an aquifer in January — an aquifer that is still bleeding 100,000 gallons of water a day — Enbridge covered it up for as long as it could until it was caught and fined $3.3 million by the Department of Natural Resources. This is the kind of people we are dealing with.
We also learned the pipeline isn't even adequately insured. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission required Enbridge to obtain $200 million of "environmental impairment liability" insurance, in addition to general corporate liability coverage of $900 million, and to include the state of Minnesota and several American Indian tribes as additional insureds on its policies. But Enbridge recently submitted a report to the Public Utilities Commission saying it will likely not be able to obtain this insurance "in the near future."
That's baffling and problematic at best. I'm wondering what Harvard Business School is thinking about that one. No insurance is not only dangerous but illustrates again that the tar sands party is over. The most expensive tar sands pipeline will be the last one to the U.S.
In 2018, due to a lack of pipeline capacity, the government of Alberta ordered tar sands and other crude oil extraction facilities to curtail production, initially by 325,000 barrels per day. This order meant that each month about 10 million barrels of oil (and the carbon within it) stayed in the ground. Although Alberta gradually ramped down the curtailment, it lasted almost two years. Thank a water protector for that.
We also delayed the Line 3 project by four years (Enbridge's initial in-service date was 2017), such that any new tar sands development efforts are now facing the near-term prospect of reduced oil demand resulting from the escalating adoption of electric vehicles and climate change policy developments, such as the Canadian carbon tax.
Delaying Line 3 by four years means that the tar sands industry now faces a global crude oil market environment that is much less favorable than in 2017.
Meanwhile, a Code Red has just been issued for the planet in the latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. With this warning, Minnesota's approval of the line, from the Public Utilities Committee to the courts, makes us look like archaic climate crisis co-conspirators.
We also look increasingly like a police state, especially in northern Minnesota. The repressive police brutalization of Line 3 opponents using rubber bullets, chemical sprays and "pain compliance" have come to the attention of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for "Violations of Anishinaabe Human Rights from Enbridge's Line 3."
This new investigation is likely to expose again into the future what a truly rotten idea the escrow account established by Enbridge and the PUC to militarize the north in the name of defending Line 3 really was. Did we learn something from our whippings?
Approaching this day for uplifting Indigenous peoples, here's a suggestion. It's time to end conquest and begin survival. Code Red for the environment means that we need to move away from fossil fuels and to organic agriculture, and to local and efficient energy. Fortunately, tribal nations are leading the way in the north. It's time to quit acting like Columbus.
To Be A Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers By Winona LaDuke
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.
Recognizing our interdependence, not independence
"It’s time for interdependence day, not independence day. That’s when we can recognize and value each other. That would be a good evolution for America, and maybe we will all learn to be patriots to the land and care for each other."
Recognizing our interdependence, not independence
Written By: Winona LaDuke | 11:00 am, Jul. 9, 2021
“It’s time for interdependence day, not independence day. That’s when we can recognize and value each other. That would be a good evolution for America, and maybe we will all learn to be patriots to the land and care for each other”
I am a patriot to a land, not a flag. Akiing, that’s the Ojibwe word for Land. Akiing means “the land to which I belong” … I am from this land and I recognize my interdependence in this world.
The Fourth of July is a complicated holiday for Indigenous people and people of color. After all, the U.S. was built on the genocide of Native people and the slavery of African Americans. In Minnesota, we remember the mass poisoning of our peoples and starvation killing 400 of our people at Sandy Lake, White Earth and beyond. We remember the hangings of the Dakota 38+2 and the land thefts of Minnesota and the U.S. In recent weeks, we’ve seen more atrocities uncovered, at Native residential schools, where thousands of bodies of Native children have been found buried.
Under the Walz administration, we continue to witness the discriminatory legal, justice and economic systems which undermine us, and shove giant pipelines through our world.
Erasure. That’s the term we should use to describe Native policy in the U.S. and in Minnesota — we just make them invisible, keeping only the promise “they said they would take our land and they took it.”
It’s hard to stomach some patriotism through all the trauma, frankly. Democracy itself, however, had Native origins, particularly from the First Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Founding fathers such as Benjamin Franklin spent much time with the Iroquois in 1744. Canasatego, leader of the Onondaga nation and spokesman for the Iroquois Confederation, advised the British colonists:
“... We heartily recommend union and a good agreement between your brethren. Our wise Forefathers established union and amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable, this has given us great weight and authority with our Neighboring Nations. We are a Powerful confederacy, and by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power.”
The Founding Fathers had some convenient omissions in their lessons: Iroquois women leaders, Clan Mothers, would appoint and remove the chiefs. “A man only served as leader if nominated by women, and women could call for his removal, for which there was no appeal,” Douglas George-Kanentiio, a leading Iroquois scholar, explains.
That’s a far cry from the U.S., where women did not have the right to vote until 1919, and by 2020, women represented a scant 23% of Congress. Native people have valued women much more.
The Iroquois also have good lessons about war, creating the confederacy to end the wars between the nations, and burying the weapons beneath the Tree of Peace. Peace-making is certainly a practice we could relearn, as we live in one of the most violent societies in the world, having most recently witnessed an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and a never-ending wartime economy, which pushes half our budget on building a military, and accentuates violence, not peace.
It’s also clear that with all the smarts of the American White Men system, we’ve managed to crash ecosystem after ecosystem. What’s clear is that the regulations do not address the violence against nature.
To be clear, when my ancestors signed the 1855 treaty, you could drink the water from every stream and river, passenger pigeons blackened the skies and the buffalo roamed by the millions. Things have not gone well and treaties remain, like the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.
It’s time for interdependence day, not independence day.
That’s when we can recognize and value each other. That would be a good evolution for America, and maybe we will all learn to be patriots to the land and care for each other.
Winona LaDuke: Return to Rice Lake
Anishinaabe celebration welcomes runners honoring — and protecting — the sacred manoomin.
Anishinaabe celebration welcomes runners honoring — and protecting — the sacred manoomin
By Winona LaDuke Posted in Activism, Agriculture, Fossil Fuel Industry on June 28, 2021
Photo by Eóin Small / Seekjoy
“You can feel the wind talk to the rice.”
Footage captured during the “Ogichidaa: Protect Niibi – Protect Manoomin” 26-mile relay run around Lower Rice Lake on June 24th, 2021. Video by Eóin Small / Seekjoy
For some, it’s been a long time alone. In addition, for those of us facing police many days on end to hold off construction of the Enbridge pipeline through our homelands, it’s a welcome sanctuary from the violence — emotional, ecological and physical. More than anything, the welcoming committee organized by community members brings us out to reaffirm our commitment to our wild rice and water.
“I’ve been around the sun about 48 times and that rice has been with me all those times. There’s really nothing like it,” Murray says. He remembers when he started ricing. “At 13 years old, I was staying at the south end with my cousin, and an old man came over and said, ‘I need a poler.’ After that I poled. I’ve done that since. It’s a great way of life for us. Take care of our rice and our water.”
This year is the lowest water level most of us can remember, and that’s made harder by a drought, irrigation and water takings from the lake. So, we hold this special maawanji’idiwag — come together, meet with each other – to receive the runners. We are still here, and Lew’s story is the story of many young men on the reservation — ricing since they were kids.
Murray is one of three or four big wild rice processers on the reservation, finishing tens of thousands of pounds of rice, creating a finished rice that’s light tan in color and flavored by the unique taste of wood parching. This is the real thing.
The wild rice economy continues, and as Cody Eaglefeather reminds us, is a part of our migration stories, and a centerpiece of our identity. “We are having an identity crisis,” he tells us all, talking about the challenges of this generation in keeping our way of life. Cody, like many other ricers, can bring in thousands of pounds of wild rice in the fall, supporting not only his family, but many families on the reservation.
Wild rice is our freedom. For 200 years, the state and other colonial institutions have been trying to destroy that freedom — through policies, subsidies, arrests, and destruction of wild rice habitat.
The rice harvest unifies community members; it’s a time of great excitement and delight in the village. Not surprisingly, Rice Lake village has opposed Enbridge’s plans since Day 1, demanding hearings be held right here, and joining thousands of other foes who took a stand against it at the Headwaters of the Mississippi. Enbridge’s work to divide the White Earth community with lucrative contracts to tribally owned Gordon Construction and the corporation’s plays in tribal politics are not viewed well here. This gathering is attended by most of the tribal council, who witness the strong resistance to the Canadian tar-sand oil conduit, Line 3.
Wild rice, or manoomin in Ojibway, is the way of life for this village, and for most of the White Earth Reservation. It feeds the body and it feeds the soul, with hundreds of thousands of pounds produced for not only our community but for sale. Today the manoomin is feeding the souls, as tribal members and friends come and gather to honor the rice, and to challenge not only Enbridge, but the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which has just allocated 5 billion gallons of water to Enbridge for Line 3, in the middle of the deepest drought we can remember.
The week before the maawanji’idiwag, tribal members saw hoses pumping water from the Upper Rice Lake by Knife River Contracting, something the company has done for years. We saw a bunch of other local businesses and farms just taking water, with very little if any regulation. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources policies are being challenged, the rice needs the water, and those policies need adaptation. After all, the White Earth tribe in 2019 recognized the Rights of Manoomin, as a part of a growing movement internationally to strengthen regulatory and constitutional protections for the rights of Nature over the rights of private property and corporations.
At the gathering, Silas Neeland, a 14-year-old from Rice Lake Village, takes a microphone in front of the crowd. He’s been organizing youth and events for the past year, and during the Covid-19 pandemic, he went as far as Washington, D.C. to have his voice heard. He tells our community to stand up for the rice: “The Black Snake is 13 miles from our wild rice lake. It’s time to kill the Black Snake,” he says.
Lew Murray has been ricing most of his life, and like hundreds of other Anishinaabe from the reservation, relies on the manoomin for sustenance. He and fellow ricers travel for the first harvest on the lakes in the south — Big Sandy, the Sandy Lake Flowage, Minnewawa, the Crow Wing lakes and more. The rice on Shell Lake is large, the river rice smaller. The harvesters then move closer to Lower Rice Lake, into the Tamarac Refuge, some of them ricing over by Leech Lake or through the Ottertail River systems. The people follow the rice. It ripens differently in each lake, or region, and that traditional ecological knowledge is kept by ricers generation after generation. Those lakes are throughout the l855 treaty territory, and today, in the impact zone of Line 3, the last tar-sands pipeline.
This is the only place in the world for this plant. Its harvest is the mark of a sustainable economy, our northern economy. For thousands of years, this has been a wild rice economy, with non-Indians benefitting as well as our tribes — by parlaying Native rice to gourmet buyers from the east and west.
In the l970s came the advent of paddy rice, created by the University of Minnesota. Paddy rice, grown in diked paddies with fertilizers and chemicals, has ravaged the wild rice economy of Minnesota. The university’s work and the creation of patented seeds of the “state grain” ultimately led to 75 percent of what’s called wild rice being produced today in diked rice paddies in northern California — a la Gourmet House, Uncle Ben’s, and Indian Harvest Wild Rice.
The university’s historic work pushed the traditional wild rice economy to the margins. Coupled with the mismanagement of water by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, it has resulted in the destruction of 70 percent of the wild rice in the state. That’s why the remaining lakes are so critical to protect, not only from Enbridge, but from industrial agriculture runoff — and of course, from the ever-looming mining industry, attempting a comeback at the end of the mining era. Protecting the water is protecting the wild rice.
The Body Burden of Hating
Coming to the village was a great emotional relief. I hadn’t realized the body burden of the hating. As I looked on and listened to the laughs and stories of Rice Lakers, a tremendous feeling of love and healing came over, again. Our people love our water and our manoomin.
Try being an Indian person or a water protector in Park Rapids these days. There’s a lot of fearful looks, even some dirty looks, some yelling at us, water protectors. It’s the Deep North, and it’s not just dirty looks, it’s continued exclusion, as the Park Rapids Chamber of Commerce seems intent upon pushing the only Native delegation out of the Park Rapids Fourth of July Parade.
I’m having some serious flashbacks to Standing Rock, as local media and Enbridge fan some racism. Why would you hate on water protectors? Hubbard County has arrested hundreds of people for standing for the water, and yet, in the midst of the deepest drought we can remember, stands by as Enbridge takes 3 billion gallons in dewatering, pushing around our freshwater like it’s a waste product. The Shell River, coming from the reservation and into the l855 treaty territory, is running at 25 percent capacity, yet Enbridge proposes to cross this river five times, and, each time, take hundreds of thousands of gallons out of the river to run pumps. Let alone the dewatering of all the trenches by the pipeline.
In the meantime, thousands of Minnesotans and others are coming to support our people, supporting the treaty rights of the Anishinaabe as well as opposing the taking of water by the foreign multinationals. “Asserting our treaty rights is not a crime, we are here to protect the water. Our non-native relatives have been moving up in a good way to defend the treaty,” Nancy Beaulieu tells the crowd. Nancy, along with Dawn Goodwin from the Rise Coalition, succeeded in bringing almost 3,000 people to the Treaty People’s Gathering in early June, and then held ceremonies on the Enbridge route, holding a space for eight days.
Meanwhile, at Rice Lake, the rice is trying to come up; it’s lying flat on the water in most places. Looking out from Big Bear Landing, you can see the rice coming in strong, and the swans on the lake, huge flocks of them. This is a sanctuary, not only for rice, but for millions of migratory birds. True to form, at Bunga Landing in Rice Lake, it’s standing on the river, the rice is returning.
A constant in our lives, the rice remains, awaiting the Anishinaabe, our prayers, our songs, and our gratitude.
Photos by Eóin Small / Seekjoy
LaDuke: Slow down to take in the Creator’s Clock
When the crows gather, the maple sap starts to run. Aandeg Biboon (Crow Moon) some call it, or Onaabaanigiizis, the hard-crusted snow moon.
Just before the maple syrup time begins is the Ojibwe New Year. There’s time on the land and time on the clock; those are different. There’s what’s called Indian Time — you are waiting for the sap to run, or the wild rice to finish parching. Then there’s the time that your flight used to leave, or maybe a Zoom call coming your way. That’s a different time.
There’s time on the land, I think of as the Creator’s Clock.
photo credit Sarah Little Red Feather
When the crows gather, the maple sap starts to run. Aandeg Biboon (Crow Moon) some call it, or Onaabaanigiizis, the hard-crusted snow moon.
Reposted from The Bemidji Pioneer
Written By: Winona LaDuke | 11:00 am, Mar. 24, 2021
The time of the coronavirus pandemic, when we were collectively forced to slow down and take a breath. When we could see the crows gather and the swans return. I am glad I saw them. They are right on time.
Just before the maple syrup time begins is the Ojibwe New Year. There’s time on the land and time on the clock; those are different. There’s what’s called Indian Time — you are waiting for the sap to run, or the wild rice to finish parching. Then there’s the time that your flight used to leave, or maybe a Zoom call coming your way. That’s a different time.
There’s time on the land, I think of as the Creator’s Clock.
Giiwedinong, now, is the time when the swans return — waabiziiwag bi azhigiiwewag. They are coming home, by the thousands, nestling into cornfields on the Ponsford prairie, the Hubbard prairie, coming home to the lakes they will grace for the months ahead. Some tough birds. They fly to open water; no need to wing it to Florida, they gather just where the ice is gone.
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.