Photo via Facebook / Indigenous Environmental Network
Several Milwaukeeans recently travelled to Northern Minnesota to protest construction work on Line 3, a thousand-mile pipeline bringing crude oil from Edmonton, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin. Enbridge Energy says that they are addressing known integrity flaws and improving efficiency. Protestors see this framing as misleading because the construction includes the laying of over 300 miles of new pipeline pumping 760,000 gallons of Canadian tar sands oil through North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin per day.
Protestors also see the construction of a new Line 3 as a violation to the Anishinaabe tribe’s treaty rights, a contributor to climate change and a destructive force to the Manoomin (wild rice), a sacred food for a number of local tribes.
Amongst the protestors at Red Lake Treaty Camp near Thief River Falls MN, the Red Lake and White Earth Reservation were two Milwaukeeans. Early on Aug. 4, 19 protestors were arrested and one was hospitalized with head injuries at the prayer cam, adding to the nearly 600 protestors who have been arrested during the Line’s construction.
Milwaukeean Lelah Allen (aka Buttons) described the movement as being “welcoming” and “palpable.” For Allen, the police presence juxtaposed this atmosphere creating an “adrenaline yo-yo.”
“There are actions happening,” she said, “There is police brutality happening, and we are cool and we are making dinner, and we are singing and we are praying and ‘oh there’s more cops’.”
Fellow Milwaukeean Uyen Vo found further inspiration in the Indigenous women who are leading the movement like Sasha Beaulieu.
“I want to support a movement Indigenous people lead,” said Vo. “I want to support protecting what is important to them, and it is also important to me, it is important to everybody—it’s water.”
Both Allen and Vo saw the impacts of Line 3 on Milwaukeeans in abstract ways such as the greater Climate Crisis and as personal responsibility. And there’s more to the story on the horizon. Enbridge Energy is proposing a relocation of Line 5 in Wisconsin.
