Red Lake Pipeline Blockade. 28th feb

Enbridge Ener­gy LP has been tres­pass­ing on Red Lake Nations Ced­ed lands in Min­neso­ta by oper­at­ing mul­ti­ple pipelines with­out an ease­ment. Nizhawen­daamin Indaakim­i­naan, a group of grass­roots Red Lake trib­al mem­bers and allies, demand that the flow of oil through these pipelines be stopped.

Enbridge Ener­gy LP has been tres­pass­ing on Red Lake Nations Ced­ed lands in Min­neso­ta by oper­at­ing mul­ti­ple pipelines with­out an ease­ment. Nizhawen­daamin Indaakim­i­naan, a group of grass­roots Red Lake trib­al mem­bers and allies, demand that the flow of oil through these pipelines be stopped. Enbridge Ener­gy LP pur­chased these oil pipelines from Lake­head Pipeline, who orig­i­nal­ly built these pipelines in 1949 on Red Lake land with­out obtain­ing the per­mis­sion of the Red Lake sov­er­eign nation. Accord­ing to Mar­ty Cobe­nais, pipeline orga­niz­er for Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work and a trib­al mem­ber of Red Lake, “Enbridge Ener­gy LP still does not have per­mis­sion to have these pipelines” on an eight acre piece of Red Lake land just south­east of Leonard, Min­neso­ta.

Today Nizhawen­daamin Indaakim­i­naan have occu­pied the land direct­ly over these pipelines on Red Lake land. They demand that these pipelines be shut down imme­di­ate­ly. “The goal is to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty not only with our first Nation broth­ers and sis­ters in Cana­da but also to pro­tect our Moth­er Earth and all of our chil­dren and future gen­er­a­tions on this earth,” says Tito Ybar­ra, a mem­ber of Nizhawen­daamin Indaakim­i­naan and an enrolled mem­ber of the Red Lake band of Ojib­we.

It is expect­ed if the occu­pa­tion pro­ceeds for three days, the flow of oil — which may include con­tro­ver­sial tar sands bitu­men extract­ed from Alber­ta, Cana­da — will have to be shut down. The 72-hour count­down has start­ed around rough­ly 3PM Thurs­day.

Sup­port­ers have been invit­ed onto the site by trib­al mem­bers to sup­port the block­ade, and cur­rent­ly vol­un­teer media from the new Unedit­ed­Me­dia col­lec­tive, TC Indy­media & [infor­mal­ly] Occu­pyMN are on site. Inter­net access appears sta­ble enough for @unedit­ed­cam­era to peri­od­i­cal­ly livestream as the camp takes shape for the long haul, also aid­ed by mild weath­er. Also @samRichards10 and Robert Des­Jar­lait (@r_desjarlait) are pro­vid­ing updates. Des­jar­lait tweet­ed “This isn’t a block­ade, as some have report­ed. There is noth­ing to block. It is a non-con­fronta­tion­al protest.” How­ev­er, it does have poten­tial con­se­quences akin to that cre­at­ed by a block­ade.

Addi­tion­al­ly it appears that Enbridge recent­ly scrubbed some con­tent per­tain­ing to con­tro­ver­sial “Line 67” from their web­site. With the dan­ger­ous Tran­scana­da Key­stone XL pipeline intend for tar sands bitu­men mired in polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy, the prospects for  extend­ing the capac­i­ty of Line 67, are rel­e­vant to the sit­u­a­tion. (There are sev­er­al pub­lic hear­ings in the region sched­uled on Line 67 in com­ing weeks.)

// UPDATE 3/1/13 11:30AM : Mar­ty Cobe­nais of the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work issues state­ment on behalf of block­ade pro­test­ers http://www.ustream.tv/uneditedcamera