Written by Winona LaDuke,

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I am a traveler, for sure, but my love of the horse, the sound of horses on our Mother Earth,  the chance to see a monarch butterfly, a back trail, and a ride with my grandchildren brings me to horse. And on Sandy Lake, it brings me to canoes. We have become a people who travel very fast, and many of us rarely stop to taste the fresh raspberries, harvest the medicines, or swim in our lakes. And perhaps we have forgotten our relationship to the natural world and the horse nation.  

These past three weeks I have had the privilege of riding with great horsemen and women, mostly Dakota and Lakota who came to ride the proposed Enbridge pipelines – this time in Wisconsin, where Enbridge has two main lines – a triangle from Superior which stretches across Bad River, Lac Courte Orielles, and into Ho Chunk territory. The line turns towards the Great Lakes and to the proposed Line 3 route in Minnesota and through the heart of our manoomin (wild rice) territory. It is an epic time and in an epic time, we must be at our best.

I am inspired by courageous people. I believe that we all are, whether Delores Huerta, Nelson Mandela or the Crow Creek Boys who we came to know at Standing Rock.  At 21, Mason Red Wing is young for a leader. Standing Rock changed his life as it did for many of us. We remember Mason and his brother Talon Voice from the early videos of the horses and dogs at Standing Rock. “Many of those who travel, saw the grammas being arrested and thrown to the ground by Morton County. …I went out there to protect the women and children, to put our  bodies in front of them,” Talon Voice tells me.

“The dogs came straight for the horses, as soon as they released the dogs. We had to drive them back..” he said.

Asked why they ventured so far into the woods and lakes to support us in our battle against Enbridge, Mason said, “You guys helped at Standing Rock, so I said why not return the favor and come support you.”

The men of Crow Creek, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Sisseton, and Santee are seasoned and weathered for their young age. Their lives are much more tragic than many, yet their love of the horse and the restoration of horse culture inspires all and heals them.

We remember who we are when we see our relatives on horse back. It is not only a healing for Lakota people. What brings us together is often the spirit, the need for redemption, and the horse nation.  

Tracy Hsu is from Elgin North Dakota, a K-12 Librarian in the school system. She rides through Minnesota with us. “What really prompted me to go to Standing Rock was the kids on horses. I saw that on FB [Facebook],” said Hsu. Those kids are Mason Red Wing, Talon Voice, Kaler Kirkie, Judson Stadel, Jason Skinny Bull,  Elliot, Matt Pumpkinseed, and many more.  

Tracy brought two half Percheron, half thoroughbred horses to ride along the proposed Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline. “ I wanted to show my support. You guys came to North Dakota.” She pauses, “I also wanted to represent what you call ‘the Deep North.’ That there are a few of us that are here, who support you, who are conscious and are good people.” 

To Tracy, the violence of the oil industry was wrong. “When they sicked dogs on people and closed the highway, I was all in. You don’t get to do that to people... Our family ranch was on the Cannonball…” she added.

The Black Snake

I became committed to ride this 200 mile stretch from Rice Lake Refuge in Minisinakwaang to Rice Lake at Gaawaabaabaanikaag, five years ago.  For those years I have ridden, always with other riders better than I, this route proposed for the pipeline. The Keri Pickett film, “First Daughter and the Black Snake” tells much of our story in the ride against the current of the oil, and our commitment to face Enbridge on a long battle.

A journey is not always in your planner. Each day is like a journey to me, that is if I am able to take the Creator up on the offer. We stop at the East Lake Powwow and probably for the first time in years, 20 horses circle through the Dance Arbor, and the host drum, Swampy Cree, sings a jingle dress song for the horses. After all, many jingle dress songs are related to horse songs.

Half way through the ride we got word that our Great Elder, Anna Gibbs, had passed on. The Dakota remembered her and asked to escort our Waasabiik, Anna Gibbs, to her final resting place at the family cemetery in Ponemah.  Tracy Hsu drives her white percherons to carry the casket, and the riders escort Anna. The ride and the journey are beautiful.

Let’s be clear that what is being proposed in the failing days of the fossil fuel industry is a disaster of epic proportions. It is the same with the extreme mining proposals, the Confined Animal Feeding Operations, and the proposed Back Forty Mine of Wisconsin. They are all part of an extreme way of life, one which is not sustainable.  A disaster of epic proportions, requires an epic answer, and courage.  On the horse, and on the land and water, you find that courage.

Most of us have had little faith in a state or federal regulatory process. And it turns out that we are related. The proposed Line 3 would add more tar sands to Enbridge’s Mainline system, and would feed into a proposed 42 inch Line 66, called a “twin” to the Line 61 in Wisconsin. Another Snake, Line 5, heads through Bad River to the Straights of Mackinac where hundreds of water protectors gather. Line 66 crosses Ho Chunk territory, and for a time, Deer Clan Elder Bill Greendeer joins us on the ride. 

The Enbridge Pipeline already cuts through one of thirteen Bear, Snake, Effigy and other mounds.
“... The Ho-Chunk Nation is no stranger to the damage caused by the oil industry to our sacred sites within our traditional territory. In its current capacity, the Enbridge Pipeline has already caused the irreparable damage to many sacred site on our homelands…”, Jon Greendeer, Executive Director of Heritage Preservation for the HoChunk Nation.

Eighty feet wide and 300 miles long, running the length of Wisconsin – through neighborhoods, businesses, farmsteads, forests, rivers – that is the swath of Wisconsin land controlled by Enbridge Energy Partners. Beneath that 80 foot swath are three pipelines carrying more than 2 million barrels of oil per day, and one pipeline carrying diluent pumped northward to extract oil from Canada’s tar sands. Now Enbridge wants more and up to 300 feet more of easement.

Unlikely Alliances

The pipeline makes unlikely allies, linked through a dysfunctional and outdated system of infrastructure.  People come to see us at every stop, bring food, water, and community feasts. In Marshfield, Wisconsin (site of the largest Enbridge spill in Wisconsin) we are sweaty from horses, and welcomed at the Presbyterian Church potluck with hundreds of people, including landowners who were deeply concerned about the Canadian company being granted eminent domain rights to expand a line in Wisconsin. We are put up in Tweed’s farm, a newly elected Tribal Council man from Lac Couirte Orielle reservation, with whom we talk of local food economies, horses and a future. 

Marjy Hanson, built her home 30 years ago near Marshfield. Wisconsin. To her, “this is about property rights... I have paid taxes here as have many of my neighbors who will suffer similar issues and some who have it worse, they will lose their home. Truly my husband and I believe 80 feet is enough.”  

The heavy lobbying of the Canadian pipeline company came to bear. In the summer of 2015 the Wisconsin legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, through the obscure Motion 999 process, changed Wisconsin’s eminent domain law to allow Enbridge to take private land through condemnations.

The proposed Sandpiper and Line 3 originally was slated to cross Lynn Mizner’s land, and after her she became intractable (ie: would not budge) Enbridge backed off and re-routed. So we camp in her yard and admire her sheep and her sheep dogs.
Each day is like a journey to me, that is if I am able to take the Creator up on the offer. 
What Mason and the other horse people did at Standing Rock changed our perceptions of who we are and where we are in history. The truth is, we have become a people who live in a box, not only a house, a housing project, a city, but a computer, a phone, and a box, of our own social limitations.

I remember clearly Mathew King saying, “the only thing sadder than an Indian who is not free, is an Indian who does not remember what it is like to be free…” And in many ways that is this time. For the Anishinaabeg to be free is to make maple syrup, harvest medicines, net fish, harvest wild rice  and live the life of these Northwoods and lakes. The Riders remind us to be free. The sound of the horse nation on our land reminds us of the larger life around us. I see the few monarchs, the quietude of our lakes, and am grateful.  

 (All photographs by Sarah Kalmanson.)

Written by Lee Egerstrom,

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The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) is reminding Indian Country that it needs to work with Congress and naturally allied groups to support programs that cover the entire food chain, from producers to consumers, who are all bunched together under what is called “the farm bill.”

Two researchers with the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative (IFAI) at the University of Arkansas School of Law have pulled together all that is at stake for Native people and tribes in a new study, Regaining our Future: An Assessment of Risks and Opportunities for Native Communities in the 2018 Farm Bill.

The SMSC funded study shows how 70 percent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget most years is used for various feeding, nutrition and food safety programs that affect all Americans and all Native people regardless where they live. The rest of the USDA budget is spread out over conservation, water quality, trade promotion, economic development, insurance and farm income stabilization programs that give the bill its name.

The study was prepared and written by the Initiative’s Janie Simms Hipp (Chickasaw Nation), a former senior advisor for tribal relations to former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Colby D. Duren, the IFAI’s policy director and former staff counsel for the National Congress of American Indians.

Their findings will come as a surprise to many people on the knife, fork and spoon end of the food chain. It happens about every five years when Congress rewrites and updates food, farm, nutrition and related natural resource legislation lumped together under the so-called farm bill.

While access to food and good nutrition is important to all Americans, the Hipp and Duren study stresses that Natives are involved in every step of the food chain from farming and ranching on down, and Natives and tribes are also engaged participants in soil, water and resource protection.

Charles R. Vig, chairman of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, emphasized those linkages in announcing publication of the new study.

“Today a food and nutritional health crisis grips most of Indian Country,” Vig said. “As Congress prepares to shape the next farm bill, there has never been a more critical time for Native Americans to unite to defend our interests.

“Tribal governments, Native producers, environmental stewards and Native community members must work together to involve Congress in helping us solve this crisis,” he added.

Hipp said in an interview that complexities for Native Americans with food and agriculture policies come partly from their own diversity. “Seventy percent of our people now live in urban centers,” she said. “But our land base is rural.”

Meanwhile, she said, this often disconnects Native food producers from urban consumers. “We have always been food producers. Our people need to feed themselves; we need to build out our food system.”

That is a SMSC objective and why it supports urban farming projects, including in the Shakopee and Prior Lake area. That prompted SMSC officials to reach out to Hipp and colleagues at the special Arkansas center more than two years ago.
Hipp said that looking at farm bill legislation title by title, “a lot of people can read the report and see themselves connected to the farm bill. It is ‘the people’s bill’,” she said.

One of the smaller titles in the bill, for promoting American food exports, actually has special importance for Minnesota tribes and Natives entrepreneurs, given the number of special Native foods companies based here. The study calls for including Native foods and companies at all U.S.-led trade promotion tours and conferences.

Much is at stake for the Native Americans and nearly all other Americans whose lives are touched in some way by the farm bill. Pressures are building in Congress to separate the bill between programs for producers and the food, nutrition and safety portions. That would break the coalition that has kept “the people’s bill” as part of public policy for nearly 150 years.

SMSC and Arkansas’ IFAI have allies for getting the report out to tribal leaders and all who are engaged with Native food and health activities. The study’s announcement statement noted Hipp and Duren consulted closely with Intertribal Agriculture Council, Intertribal Timber Council and National Congress of American Indians in preparing the report.       
As for SMSC, supporting pure, or basic research, across the breadth of Indian Country is not new. The Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative research project is a continuation of a commitment made in 2015 by the Shakopee Mdewakanton community.

SMSC, the largest Native American philanthropic contributor, launched a $10 million campaign two years ago called Seeds of Native Health to improve Native nutrition and food access through grants. As part of that, it funds research education and “capacity-building efforts,” the tribe explained.

In has partnered in that work with the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, AmeriCorps VISTA, Better Way Foundation (Minneapolis-based foundation supporting child well-being, family and community efforts), the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ Center for Indian Country Development, First Nations Development Institute (Longmont, Colo.), MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger (Los Angeles-based with state programs), Notah Begay III Foundation (Pueblo, N.M. foundation that supports children’s health initiatives), and projects and programs at the University of Arkansas' IFAI and University of Minnesota.

The Regaining Our Future study is available online at SMSC’s Seeds of Native Health site, at
http://seedsofnativehealth.org/regaining-our-future-report .

 

Written by Winona LaDuke,

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“We applaud the courts for protecting our laws and regulations from undue political influence, and will ask the Court to shut down pipeline operations immediately.” – Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II

For the past two weeks, Minnesotans and tribal members have packed  Department of Commerce meetings on the Draft  Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS)  on Enbridge  Line 3.  Thousands of people have come to ask questions of the state, in what is a very, very short timetable for a major project.

The DEIS is 5000 pages in length, but under heavy fire as inadequate.  Four tribal governments have intervened in the process: Red Lake Nation intervened in mid June, Fond du Lac, White Earth and Mille Lacs all have filed as intervenors.

ome huge questions loom. Enbridge, for instance, has stated that it will take over $l.2 billion to remove the aging Line 3 with all the “leaks and anomalies.” But they have not stated  who will pay for this or how much more it might cost if we were to clean up the “legacy contamination” under the line.  

At all meetings, people (Native and non-Native) have asked why the Ojibwe communities should be sacrificed for a Canadian tar sands pipeline, when the tar sands industry is on its last breath.     

The final DEIS is scheduled to be out in the fall and the pipeline’s certificate of need (what they need to begin construction) could be issued by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission  as early as April of next year. At a St. Paul press conference in June,  Minnesota State Representatives Mary Konesh Podien – flanked by others, including Frank Hornstein, John Marty and Karen Clark – challenged the adequacy of the state’s draft environmental impact statement and asked for a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on pipeline abandonment, prior to any new pipeline approvals.

The EIS is on a very fast track to keep with Enbridge’s convenience, and a Pawlenty imposed deadline. In comparison, the state of New York took seven years to review proposals for fracking, before the moratorium was issued. A federal  ban on lead shot took decades for review.

“Complex decisions take time,” Honor the Earth Attorney Frank Bibeau said, “particularly when there are thousands of comments as to the inadequacy of the EIS, and huge regional and global implications. The interests of Minnesota citizens require due diligence in review by policy makers.”

In the meantime, two major legal cases, may impact significantly on the state’s liability and Minnesota’s future.

In mid June, Michigan’s Attorney General filed new charges of involuntary manslaughter against five officials in the Flint Water Crisis investigation, among them the head of Michigan’s Health Department.

Michigan indictments on state negligence have resulted in l3 charges for state officials who “did not act to protect the interests of Flint citizens.” The city of Flint, Michigan came to international attention when their drinking water system collapsed. “The Flint Water Crisis was and is a failure of leadership”, a report issued by Michigan Attorney General Bull Schuette notes.   “... A cause of the breakdown in state management was a fixation, a preoccupation with data, finance and costs instead of placing the health, safety and welfare of citizens first.”

“Michigan’s example may be a forewarning to Minnesota public officials. In particular, drinking water issues are already a concern in many northern tribal communities, and new threats will likely exacerbate those conditions,” Bibeau said.

Meanwhile, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) continues to be challenged.  Federal Judge James Boarsberg (DC)   ruled in June that approval permits issued by the Trump administration violated the law in certain critical respects.

According to attorneys at Earth Justice, “The Court did not determine whether pipeline operations should be shut off and has requested additional briefing on the subject and a status conference on June 21…” 

The Standing Rock Tribe responded. “We applaud the courts for protecting our laws and regulations from undue political influence,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II, “and will ask the Court to shut down pipeline operationsimmediately.”

The legal case involves similar issues to that of the proposed Line 3, particularly with regards to the environmental injustice of setting a pipeline near tribal people instead of near a white community, as was originally planned. DAPL was rerouted to be directly north of the Standing Rock reservation so as not to impact the city of Bismarck. 

The Minnesota Department of Commerce notes that the tribal community bears the largest impact of this proposed project:, despite route alternatives.  At Evidentiary Hearings,  Enbridge  leadership testified that the route through tribal lands was the least risk to the broader society. Not that different than DAPL. The DEIS also notes, “… A finding of ‘disproportionate and adverse impacts’ does not preclude selection of any given alternative.” 

As Earth Justice explains, “The Obama administration made a carefully considered decision that these Treaty Rights needed to be respected in connection with an oil pipeline immediately upstream of the reservation. The Trump administration ignored that advice, and acted as if the Tribe does not exist.”

In short, the Michigan indictments of State and County officials, and the Standing Rock federal court decision could have serious implications for Enbridge’s future in the region. As tribal governments line up on the side of their people, state and northern county officials might be cautious about those oaths of office. It seems that Michigan’s Attorney General found out the hard way that oaths were to serve the public. Northern counties and state may want to review their oaths of office in the face of massive pressure by a Canadian pipeline company.   

Written by Lee Egerstrom,

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A multimedia training program for Native American youth in the Twin Cities is taking a large step forward and becoming a competitive media production company serving a variety of clients in the metro area.

Since the beginning of this year, First Person Productions is attempting to be a self-sustaining and competitive multimedia production company, said Binesikwe Means, the program and company’s media team leader.

First Person Productions, 1516 East Lake Street, Minneapolis,  and its parent nonprofit organization, MIGIZI Communications, works with about 50 high school and middle school students each year.

Now, some of these students are becoming employees and work and learn by producing promotional videos, various training and educational media, public service announcements (PSAs), documentaries, radio programs and podcasts, and advertising and brand promotions that use audiovisual products.

Means said there are currently seven high school students at First Person Productions during after school hours. They are students at Roosevelt, South and Washburn high schools in Minneapolis and Harding High School in St. Paul. Enrollment is larger during the summer months.

For some, the training program is introductory to learn about multimedia and audio-visual equipment and discover one’s own interests. “I’d say it is a hobby for me now,” said Iliana Zephier (Yankton Dakota), a student at Roosevelt High School. “But who knows.”

For others it is clearly an attempt to access equipment, training and learn about their own talents and interests that may lead to post-secondary studies and artistic and business careers emerging as great 21st Century opportunities, said Means (Oglala Lakota).
That is where training and working in a real business environment share the same road leading to potential opportunities ahead. With any form of multimedia, communications and journalism, she said. “They will (also) need to know the business.”

Means worked for six years at In Progress, the nonprofit digital arts training program based in St. Paul, before joining First Person Productions in December to prepare for the latter’s expansion as an entrepreneurial company in multimedia production.

First Person Production is off and running by tailoring products and services for diverse clients. These services include filming and documenting events, making one to two-minute PSAs, talk show documentation, promotional spots, 30 to 90-minute commercials, training videos, documentaries, editing and DVD production services, and fundraising videos usable for groups involved with the annual MN Give to the Max Day.

Native, health and educational groups are among the company’s initial clients.

Some include programs for Minneapolis Public Schools, the Indian Health Board, elder interviews for the Minnesota Historical Society, Center for School Change, Minneapolis Department of Health, Achieve Minneapolis, American Indian Cancer Foundation, and the Indigenous Peoples Task Force.

Some are nonprofit organizations that also seek to be viable entrepreneurial organizations as well, like First Person Productions. They would include Mixed Blood Theater, New Native Theater, and Running Wolf Fitness Center.

Still others have ties to the Native communities through philanthropic work. Among them are the Tiwahe Foundation, the Division of Indian Work and Native Americans in Philanthropy.    

Adam Savariego (Upper Sioux), representing the University of Minnesota’s Youth Development Leadership program, said he was astonished by “the creativity and technical skills the students already possessed” when they worked on a presentation for the University’s program.
Another aspect of the training is that students will learn there are many different business forms that entrepreneurs may use to turn personal interests and talents into meaningful careers.

By seeking to become an ongoing, self-sustaining business, First Person Productions is emulating the multiple objective business plans of tribal-owned enterprises and cooperatives, including credit unions and mutual insurance companies, which are popular throughout Upper Midwest states.

These member-owned and operated businesses have a primary purpose of meeting business or service needs of members, insists Dutch economist and business professor Gert van Dijk, a leading international expert on cooperatives and their strategies. At the same time, the ventures must be sound enterprises in their own right to survive and succeed in competitive markets.

Where nonprofit businesses are different is that the “members” aren’t really a collection of shareholders. Rather, they are stakeholders – beneficiaries and community members who share reasons for being connected or reliant on an enterprise.

First Person Productions is like a close relative of cooperatives and tribal-owned enterprises, said Graham Hartley, director of programs for MIGIZI Communications.

The nonprofit MIGIZI was launched in 1977 with the objectives of training youth and countering misrepresentations of Native Americans and their communities. This started with producing the first nationally distributed radio show and later television programming for the region. That was the initial enterprise of MIGIZI and the origin of First Person Productions, Hartley said.

From the start, MIGIZI has been a training vehicle for young Native people by introducing high school-age students to modern visual, graphic and audio technology and constantly evolving strategies for multimedia presentations.

MIGIZI has expanded over the years and now has several training and education programs serving Native and at-risk youth. Programs called Green Jobs Pathway, Native Academy, Native Youth Futures, Advancing Change and First Person Productions are somewhat interconnected.

The parent foundation helps students with paid internships when they are working on First Person products, Hartley said. And it also has a matching savings program that multiplies the amount of money students set aside in saving for future college tuition expenses.

The multiple goals of MIGIZA and First Person Productions impressed the University’s Savariego as much as the students’ sophisticated skills.

“I didn’t know about their programs,” he said. “It blew me away.

“This is exactly what I want to do in working with and empowering young people when I get my MED.”

To learn more about MIGIZI and First Person Productions, or to see their products, services and prices, see their website at: http://www.migizi.org .

Written by Winona LaDuke,

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Line 3:  It’s the sequel to the Sandpiper but larger. Last year, the White Earth Ojibwe people joined with many others to stop the Sandpiper, the fracked oil pipeline. Now Enbridge is back with another line – same route, same problems. This month, people will have an opportunity to ask questions and comment on Line 3, the Canadian based, 900,000-barrels-a-day, tar sands pipeline.

The Court ordered environmental review released by the Minnesota Department of Commerce is huge and offers some good information. It also brings some deep concerns, including why the “No Build Option” is not recommended.
The project would grant an entirely new corridor for perpetuity through northern Minnesota. That project is not technically a “replacement” since it is in a new corridor and is a much larger pipe.  

Quesitons I might Ask
If you are a Native person, you might want to know why you don’t matter. The Department of Commerce reports that “American Indian communities and individuals have unique health issues associated with historical trauma and structural racism. …American Indians in Minnesota have greater health disparities and poorer health outcomes compared to other racial and ethnic groups in Minnesota…”
The report also states, “…the uprooting of the people from their traditional lands… creates psychological and health impacts for generations. Displacement brought about a loss of traditional ways of making a living, of providing food for the table, and of being in relationship with one another…”

The report also says, “The impacts associated with the proposed Project and its alternatives would be an additional health stressor on tribal communities that already face overwhelming health disparities and inequities…”  

The Department of Commerce notes the Tribal community bears the largest impact of this proposed project, “Any of the routes selected would negatively affect tribal resources and tribal members. The… relationship to the land and the rights tribal members have in the ceded territories complicates the traditional notion of mitigation. The ceded territories and the rights that go with them are not mobile and cannot be transferred…”

And then there’s this, “…A finding of ‘disproportionate and adverse impacts’ does not preclude selection of any given alternative. …This finding does, however, require detailed efforts to avoid, mitigate, minimize, rectify, reduce, or eliminate the impact associated with the construction of the Project or any alternatives.”

In other words, does this mean, “deal with it”?

The Department of Commerce also noted that the preferred project route would cross more wild rice lakes than any other proposed route.
Where is the spill data?

Enbridge has tried to bar the disclosure of this information from the public, stating that some “bad actors” might use this information. Park Rapids based Friends of the Headwaters pointed out that “…Enbridge pipelines on its mainline route are exposed above ground or shallowly buried in many locations. Google Earth can be used to find such pipelines hanging above streams. This imagery reveals that many pipelines are within a few feet of each other. The type of person who would do deliberate damage already has plenty of information about where to do such damage….”  

There are some spill scenarios in the report, but none has been done, for instance, on the St. Louis River. If I was  Duluth’s mayor or city council, I would want to know what the plan was to protect the Great Lakes.

Abandonment
There’s not a lot of discussion of this in the document, although this is a pretty big problem and a precedent. There are at least eight operating pipelines in Minnesota, of which most have been around thirty or more years. This is the first “abandonment” of a line and would set a national precedent.

Let’s say this problem does not get solved now… and so another five lines or so get abandoned, and then what?    Time to fix the problem now.  Let’s find out what’s under the pipes which Enbridge says are in a state of “deterioration”,  in other words, they are leaking.  

This year, Representative Rick Hanson (DFL, 52A)  proposed the first attempt to give landowners a right to make decisions on pipelines in their territory. The idea of tribes and the state regulating abandonment in our pristine watersheds might be a good idea. Many landowners say that should be solved before we talk about any new pipelines.  

The impact on the place the pipe comes from, where it goes, and the overall atmosphere from 900,000 barrels a day of tar sands oil might take a bit more work to figure out. It’s more than the cancers and health impacts on the Dene people who live downstream from the tar sands projects.

One Canadian report notes, “No one knows what will happen when a mine has exhausted a site, shuts down its operation, and leaves. Tailings pond abandonment is an unproven technology whose success is predicated on modeling rather than real world experience. . . . Billions of cubic meters of contaminated water soon will be sitting untended, with no active pumping, in abandoned ponds adjacent to the Athabasca River.”

And finally, there is a question of need. The Toronto Globe and Mail suggests that pipeline companies and politicians are overbuilding tar sands pipe lines by 2.4 million barrels a day capacity. And it is not clear how much tar sands oil, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, will be produced in ten or fifteen years.

Now would be the time to ask if this pipeline is needed.  Informational meetings are set to take place in June around Minnesota.

Pipeline 3 Meeting

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Enbridge Energy’s proposed Line 3 Pipeline Project has been made available for public review and comment. The DEIS was prepared by the Minnesota Department of Commerce in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to evaluate human and environmental impacts of the proposed Line.  Public meetings will provide an opportunity to learn about the info in the EIS and provide oral or written comments into record. Comments will be accepted through July 10 and may be emailed, mailed, or faxed. Email address: Pipeline.Comments@ state.mn.us. US Mail: Jamie MacAlister, Environmental Review Manager, MN Dept of Commerce, 85 7th Place E., # 280, St. Paul, MN 55101-2198. Fax: 651-539-0109. Include docket numbers CN-14-916 and PPL-15-137 on all comments. Personally identifying information is not edited or deleted from submissions.

Meetings will be held at the following times and locations:
• June 6: 10am-1pm,  Rice Lake Comm Center, 13830 Community Loop, Bagley.
• June 6: 6-9pm, IRA Civic Center, 1401 NW 3rd Ave, Grand Rapids.
• June 7: 10am-1pm, Park Rapids High School, Cafetorium, 401 Huntsinger Ave, Park Rapids.
• June 7: 6-9pm, Palace Casino Hotel, 16599 69th Ave NW, Cass Lake.
• June 8: 10am-1pm, Downtown Fair Center, 107 W 7th Ave, Floodwood.
• June 8: 6-9pm, Central Lakes College, room E54, 501 W College Dr, Brainerd.
• June 9: 11am-2pm. Maslowski Wellness & Research Center, 17 5th Street SW, Wadena.
• June 12: 10am-1pm, Grand Casino Hinckley, 777 Lady Luck Dr, Hinckley.
• June 12: 6-9pm, East Lake Comm. Ctr, 36666 State Hwy 65, McGregor.
• June 13: 10am-1pm, FDL Tribal College, 2101 14th St, Cloquet.
• June 13: 6-9pm, Intercontinental Hotel Saint Paul, 11 E. Kellogg Blvd, St. Paul.
• June 14: 11am-2pm, Staples Comm Ctr, 425 4th St NE, Staples.
• June 14: 6-9pm, Initiative Found-ation, 405 1st St SE, Little Falls.
• June 15: 10am-1pm, Henry's Catering Hall, 6774 MN-25, Foley.
• June 15: 6-9pm, Phoenix Hotel, 210 MN-23, Milaca.
• June 16: 10am-1pm, Grand Event Center, 2025 Rowland Rd, Mora.
• June 20: 10am-1pm, Marshall Cty Central Schools, 310 W Minnesota Ave, Newfolden.
• June 20: 6-9pm, Hallock City Hall, 163 3rd St SE, Hallock.
• June 21: 10am-1pm, R. Engelstad Arena, Imperial Rm, 525 Brooks Ave N, Thief River Falls.
• June 21: 6-9pm, Plummer Senior Citizen Center, 185 Minnesota St, Plummer.
• June 22: 10am-1pm, Gully Comm. Center, 120 Main St, Gully.
• June 22: 6-9pm, Sanford/Nielson Conv. Ctr, 1111 Event Center Dr NE, Bemidji.