Red Lake Chippewa Blockade Enbridge Tar Sands Pipelines

16 March 2013

For over two weeks now, Nizhawen­daamin Inaakim­i­naan (We Love Our Land) has been occu­py­ing land direct­ly above four pipelines across an ease­ment that Enbridge has claimed since 1949 when the com­pa­ny, then called Lake­head Pipe Line Com­pa­ny, installed the first of four pipelines across land owned by the Red Lake Band of Chippe­wa despite not hav­ing an ease­ment from the Red Lake Chippe­wa Nation. These pipes car­ry tox­ic tar sands, Bakken oil, as well as Cana­di­an crude. By threat­en­ing the local lakes, these pipes endan­ger the lives and eco­nom­ic liveli­hood of Red Lake Band mem­bers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3JXYe88sREc

The grass­roots group of Red Lake Chippe­wa and Anishi­naabe Indi­ans is joined by block­aders and sol­i­dar­i­ty activists deter­mined to shut down the pipelines, hold Enbridge to account for steal­ing land, and protest Enbridge’s pro­posed expan­sion of the near­by Alber­ta Clip­per tox­ic tar sands pipeline.

Locat­ed in North­ern Min­neso­ta near the town of Leonard, the occu­pa­tion of the Red Lake land began Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 28. Requests to Enbridge regard­ing inter­nal safe­ty reg­u­la­tions relat­ed to above-ground activ­i­ty over their pipelines result­ed in a spokesper­son claim­ing that activ­i­ty such as fires and the con­struc­tion of per­ma­nent struc­tures like fences and hous­es would result in a pipeline need­ing to be shut down.

Sim­i­lar encamp­ments, like the Unist’ot’en Camp, have been spring­ing up across the con­ti­nent to fight the fos­sil fuel indus­try and stop the destruc­tion of sacred lands in the pur­suit of ever-more dan­ger­ous and destruc­tive fos­sil fuel resources. Indeed, the pipeline indus­try would be hard pressed to imag­ine a tougher time in which to be doing busi­ness.

Indige­nous resis­tance to tar sands pipelines in the region dates back to 2009 when Enbridge’s Alber­ta Clip­per tar sands line was run through Leech Lake and Fond du Lac Anishi­naabe reser­va­tions. The pipeline was only saved by tech­ni­cal­i­ties in trib­al law that led a judge to dis­miss the case against the deci­sion by elect­ed offi­cials to con­tract with Enbridge.

Enbridge is cur­rent­ly in the process of seek­ing approval to near­ly dou­ble the capac­i­ty of the near­by Alber­ta Clip­per tox­ic tar sands pipeline from its cur­rent 440,000 bar­rels per day up to 800,000 bpd. Not only will the Red Lake action take four pipelines offline, it is also set­ting prece­dent that pipeline expan­sion will not be tol­er­at­ed! Not only that, but shut­ting down the ille­gal Enbridge pipelines may pre­vent mil­lions of bar­rels of dirty tar sands from reach­ing mar­ket.

Now, with a deci­sive­ly bold move and the back­ing of large con­stituen­cies of Red Lake Band mem­bers due to years of local com­mu­ni­ty self-edu­ca­tion, Nizhawen­daamin Inaakim­i­naan might well set the first exam­ple of a tar sands line being forced to shut down per­ma­nent­ly due to protest after it has been oper­a­tional!

“When I was informed about the ille­gal tres­pass­ing of the com­pa­ny Enbridge on my home­land, I knew there was some­thing I could do. I start­ed call­ing as many Red Lak­ers as I could to try and make them aware,” said Ang­ie Pala­cio who ini­ti­at­ed the encamp­ment with the sup­port of the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work.

Sup­port for their efforts has been pour­ing in from many nations and groups:

Tom Poor­bear, vice pres­i­dent of the Ogalala Sioux Nation declared, “We ful­ly sup­port the Red Lake Nation and its mem­bers who are oppos­ing the Enbridge pipeline to stop the flow and remove the ille­gal pipeline from their land.”

Bill McK­ibben, founder of 350.org has stat­ed, “I imag­ine every­one involved in the plan­et-wide resis­tance to fos­sil fuel is watch­ing them with thanks.”

Chief Bill Eras­mus of the Dene First Nation stat­ed, “We ful­ly sup­port and are inspired by the Red Lake mem­bers and their resis­tance as it is stat­ed in the Moth­er Earth Accord; affirm­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect and pre­serve for our descen­dents, the inher­ent sov­er­eign rights of our indige­nous nations, the rights of prop­er­ty own­ers, and all inher­ent human rights.”

Enbridge, of course, is a major play­er in the tox­ic tar sands pipeline saga being respon­si­ble for the costli­est onshore petro­chem­i­cal spill in US his­to­ry. On July 25, 2010 a tar sands/diluted bitu­men spill from Enbridge’s 6B pipeline near Mar­shall, Michi­gan that result­ed in the release of over a mil­lion gal­lons of tox­ic tar sands/diluted bitu­men and a per­ma­nent­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed 40-mile stretch of the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er along well as sev­er­al trib­u­taries. There have been hun­dreds of health prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with expo­sure to the tar sands chem­i­cals and since the spill sev­er­al deaths have been attrib­uted to the sud­den expo­sure. These chem­i­cals imme­di­ate­ly begin evap­o­rat­ing upon release and are heav­ier than air, form­ing a tox­ic cloud at ground-lev­el that is prac­ti­cal­ly inescapable.

Clear after the spill was the com­plete lack of under­stand­ing Enbridge and US Fed­er­al oil spill response teams had in how to clean up a tar sands/diluted bitu­men spill. Dilut­ed bitu­men is not crude oil and there­fore does not behave like crude oil upon release. There are still no estab­lished cleanup pro­to­cols and emer­gency first respon­ders in regions like Texas and Okla­homa, where the 750,000 bar­rels per day Key­stone XL pipeline is pro­posed to tra­verse by the end of 2013, have nev­er been informed or warned as to how to man­age the extreme­ly tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men spills com­mon to the tar sands indus­try.

Com­mu­ni­ties in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the dev­as­tat­ing spill are still reel­ing and are show­ing lit­tle to no signs of recov­ery – bio­log­i­cal or eco­nom­ic.

Nizhawen­daamin Inaakim­i­naan is well aware of these hap­pen­ings and has tak­en one of the most excit­ing steps to rid their ter­ri­to­ry of the threat to com­mu­ni­ty health and safe­ty that tar sands pipelines pose.

They are accept­ing dona­tions to assist in the pur­chase of build­ing and life-sus­tain­ing mate­ri­als here:
https://www.wepay.com/donations/enbridgeblockade. Please donate if you can!