The Connections That Bind Us

Far from the cool air of Lake Michigan, a surprisingly cool summer night had graced Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood as golden hour warmed the city’s skyline to the north. A crowd had gathered at the El Paseo Community Garden. In an all too rare moment, social media activism bled into the real world when I showed up for “an evening of art, food, learning, and resistance” as advertised by the flyer I found while doom-scrolling Instagram. It was a direct call to stand in solidarity with the Indigenous’ fight to oppose the expansion of the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. Local activists and Indigenous voices would share their stories from the front lines. I went to listen.

At the core of the resistance is what’s known as the “Line 3 Replacement Project.” Line 3 is an oil and gas pipeline owned by Enbridge, Canada’s largest oil and gas company. The pipeline’s thousand-mile journey begins in the remote tar sands of Alberta, Canada and culminates in Superior, Wisconsin.

Already responsible for numerous leaks, Line 3 has degraded to such a degree that Enbridge has been forced to operate the pipeline at reduced capacity in recent years, or risk catastrophic failure. While Enbridge has stated the purpose of the project is to “address pipeline integrity and safety concerns,” according to filings with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, their motivation “to restore the throughput of the line to its original operating capacity of 760,000 barrels per day (bpd)” cannot be overlooked.

After decades of gradual degradation, Enbridge has relinquished responsibility to address its failing infrastructure in favor of new construction with even higher output. As for the existing pipeline, rather than pay to dismantle it per federal regulation, the company opted for what is known as “Landowner’s Choice”—direct payments made to landowners along the existing route—abandoning the pipeline where it stands.

In the garden, photos from protest encampments along the proposed route hung from twine strung up between two trees. Each offered a glimpse into life on the frontlines. In one, signs were held high as families gathered along threatened riverbanks. Another showed a pair of protestors attached to construction machinery via arm tubes—think huge Chinese finger traps made of PVC pipe and duct tape. Juxtaposed to these challenging images, a humble potluck sat on a nearby picnic table welcoming attendees.

With no discernible leader, an amorphous group had spilled around the raised garden beds. I made my way towards the band, curious how the evening would take shape. I sampled another table, this one filled with pins and pamphlets rather than food. I was familiar with most of the environmental concerns, like habitat loss and oil spills, but I couldn’t help but recognize my ignorance to the central claim presented: Indigenous treaty rights.

The land known today as Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin has long been home to the Anishinaabeg people, a language family comprised of several Indigenous tribes. Amongst them, native to modern-day Minnesota, the Ojibwe nations ceded land to the US government in a series of treaties that date back to the 1800s. The 1837 White Pine Treaty and the 1855 Treaty with the Chippewa provided the US government with access to tens of millions of acres of white pine forests during the height of a construction boom across the country. In exchange for settler timber, these treaties were intended to protect the Ojibwe people’s heritage establishing usufructuary rights to hunt, fish, and gather on all ceded lands. When agreeing to terms, Ojibwe Chief Flat Mouth of Leech Lake insisted his people could still “get their living from the lakes and rivers. We cannot live deprived of our lakes and rivers.”

Although treaties are protected by the US Constitution, treaty rights have historically been far from enforced. The strongest defense came in the 1999 Supreme Court decision Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians. Tensions had risen for decades between tribal members and law enforcement over disputed fishing rights. Eventually landing on the docket of the US Supreme Court, the Court found the Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin state governments had unfairly asserted their authority and the treaty rights of Ojibwe people were upheld. Encouraging as this decision was, it has done little to halt the more insidious encroachment by the oil and gas industry onto treaty lands.

Expanding north from the Gulf Coast, a map of existing liquid oil and gas pipelines is dizzying. It looks more like a crude web spun by an intoxicated Texas spider than an organized energy network. Like spindles of web connecting a myriad of regional refineries, these pipelines supply the country with the fuel we use daily to fill our engines and heat our stoves. What this map fails to represent though, are the costs endured by those who call these regions home. In many cases, a home that has existed long before we started plumbing fossil fuels from deep within the earth.

Across the country, vulnerable communities disproportionately feel the environmental and social impact of oil and gas development. Temporary living quarters for pipeline workers, or "man camps” as they’ve become known, are often filled with a majority male, non-native workforce. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Indigenous communities that neighbor many of these camps have come to expect increased rates of sex trafficking, violence, and cases of MMIW (missing and murdered Indigenous women). In some cases, at rates nearly ten times the national average.

Like the blood that courses through my veins, it’s hard to separate the energy demands of daily life from the tragedy left in the wake of these metal snakes. But that doesn’t mean the only option is to acquiesce to a guilty status quo. Rather, if there is any hope to heal these cross-cultural wounds, it starts with recognizing the targeted environmental and social costs Indigenous communities will continue to suffer in the face of the expanded fossil fuel infrastructure.

Now a crowd of about fifty or so, we shuffled towards the north end of the garden as the band announced their last song. Patiently, I sat a cross-legged in the grass as folks regrouped, forming a semicircle around makeshift stage.

While the front lines of this fight were hundreds of miles north, Tom [insert last name], of Northwest Indiana Resist, managed to reframe the issue for an audience of those who call Chicago home. While Line 3 culminates in Superior, Wisconsin, the crude oil continues south to the sixth largest oil refinery in the country—roughly the size of Chicago’s downtown Loop neighborhood. Just sixteen miles away from where we sat, mere feet from Lake Michigan, BP processes over 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day at the century-old Whiting Refinery.

It’s easy to oppose the grotesque scene of a tar sands mine where this crude oil originates. Unlike traditional oil drilling that reaches deep underground, tar sands extraction is more surface level. It involves the removal of large swaths of earth, in search of a thick, dark substance called bitumen. Bitumen, rich in hydrocarbons (the same molecules found in liquid oil), must then be refined in a process that requires nearly three times as much water as conventional oil does. Where and how to store said wastewater poses its own set of unique challenges. In some cases, it is stored above ground in toxic ponds, at times as large as thirty square miles—nearly half the size of Washington D.C. Alternatively, the toxic water is stored in the same well the bitumen was extracted from—posing a significant contamination risk to freshwater.

“What good is anything without clean water?” asked Nancy Leyneux, Indigenous water protector and protest camp leader. Unable to leave the front lines, Leyneux managed to transport the crowd north via a pre-recorded message. Her voice crackled through audio interference as she called on President Biden to uphold the treaty rights and shutdown the advancing Line 3 development. Treaties are supposed to offer nonpartisan protections to a sovereign people but have been routinely disregarded in service of the profit petroleum promises.

According to a leak detection study conducted by the US Department of Transportation’s Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, there is a 57% risk of a major spill for any given pipeline over a 10-year period. Responsible for transporting nearly 25% of North America’s crude oil, it should then come as no surprise to learn Enbridge pipelines are responsible for the two largest inland oil spills in the US.

On July 25, 2010, Enbridge’s Line 6 pipeline released 1.2 million gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. Heavier than conventional oil, the spill posed unique challenges to the response teams as it sunk the bottom of the river. Recreation, fishing, and foraging were prohibited indefinitely. A first in Kalamazoo River history. Local Indigenous communities were some of hardest hit in the fallout. Many still rely on the wild rice along the river as a source of food and as part of their rich spiritual practice. 

Line 3 is hardly an exception. On March 3, 1991, the pipeline ruptured. 1.7 million gallons of oil spilled into Grand Rapids, Minnesota, just two miles from the Mississippi River. Protestors, including local Indigenous water protectors, gathered at the site this past March for the thirtieth anniversary of the spill to remind the public the threat Line 3 poses is hardly hypothetical. Tragic as each of these incidents were, they are not statistical anomalies.

The Minnesota state government’s environmental impact statement (EIS) offered little relief. Wild rice is woven into the identity of the Anishinaabeg people and is among the rights supposed to be protected under treaty law. If one goes, the other will follow. Although the EIS specifically acknowledges “disproportionate and adverse impacts on Native communities”—including direct impact to 389 acres of wild rice across 17 unique waterbodies—it did little to halt construction.

The EIS went further, confirming “any of the routes, route segments, and system alternatives would have a long-term detrimental effect on tribal members as a result of crossing treaty lands.” Intended to protect vulnerable peoples and ecologies, much like the treaties before them, the EIS looks like little more than a formality.

One of the last to speak, local environmental activist, Brian Holmes, reflected on what brought this group together in the first place. This past June he, along with a group of fellow activists from Chicago, traveled to the Treaty People’s Gathering in Northern Minnesota. The event intended to put “bodies on the line, to stop construction and tell the world that the days of tar sands pipelines are over.” While sharing his experience, Holmes was blunt about the questions many non-Indigenous grappled with while joining the Indigenous in their fight.

How did I come to live here? Who am I within the context of these treaties?

What can I do to uphold these treaties?

By their nature, these treaties exist within a binary: Indigenous and non-Indigenous, both parties agreeing to respect and uphold the terms established within. Wrestling with questions of ethics and heritage, Holmes shared a moment of clarity. As non-Indigenous, assuming we honor the integrity of these treaties, granting the Indigenous and their lands equal consideration, “we can all be Treaty People.”

Ultimately, there is no separating Line 3 from the long history of physical and cultural violence suffered by the Anishinaabeg people. Equally true is the fact that halting the construction of any single pipeline will not sever our reliance on fossil fuels. But we cannot allow industry powers to divide our communities around identitarian lines. We make decisions daily that impact society’s reliance on these fuel sources. Choosing to walk rather drive, natural or recycled fibers in our clothing, or by eating locally sourced foods are just some of the ways we as individuals can begin to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. But it isn’t solely on the individual to make these sacrifices. Our institutions need to uphold the agreements made generations ago.

Like the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines before it, the fight to oppose Line 3 remains at its core a fight for Indigenous sovereignty. If we truly object to the disproportionate impact oil and gas infrastructure has on Indigenous communities, we must raise our collective voices on behalf of these communities that continue to be subjugated and have their rights ignored.

At an impasse, I take comfort in the words of an unnamed activist who spoke last in the garden. “We don’t do this to stop one pipeline from being built. We do this to show others it’s okay to question these entrenched systems. This is our theater where we play out our message: A different future is possible, whether or not we’re fortunate enough to live to see it.”