The Water Protector Spring is coming
By Winona LaDuke Are you going to shoot us for a Canadian pipeline company? Or put another way, if this pipeline is such a good idea, why are there so many cops up north? The Minneapolis Star Tribune just revealed that Enbridge has laid out $750,000 to northern police forces, not counting an undisclosed number […]
Winter Count: Mississippi River
By Winona Laduke November 20. 2020: Army Corps of Engineers issues 404 permits to cross waters of Minnesota, based on the findings of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The Army Corps did not do an environmental impact statement on the water crossings, or potential of a spill into Lake Superior, instead relying upon the state’s […]
Ojibwe bands ask for halt on Line 3 construction
By Dan Kraker/MPR The Red Lake and White Earth Bands of Ojibwe have asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to pause the ongoing construction of the Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project until lawsuits challenging the project’s approval can be heard. The bands, along with several nonprofit groups and the Minnesota Department of Commerce, have […]
Pipelines: How risky do you wanna be?
By Winona LaDuke Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) continues to be an embarrassment to state regulatory authorities, slogging ahead with what we might call the last tar sands pipeline. On June 25, Little Big Horn Day, the PUC reaffirmed approvals of the Enbridge Line 3 project- route and need. The White Earth Nation, Red Lake […]
Landowners challenge Eminent Domain and Line 3 faces new challenges
By Winona LaDuke While the Enbridge Company seeks to push ahead with Line 3 in Minnesota, the future of this pipeline, Enbridge and the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipeline remain twirled in their fate with oil markets and the COVID 19 Pandemic. The world is rapidly changing In late May, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison […]
Scientists find 117 chemicals in Grand Portage fish and lake bottom
By Lee Egerstrom This is the first of a two-part series (read part two here). An extensive three-year research study of lakes in and around the Grand Portage Indian Reservation has found an abundance of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, hormones, pesticides, and other chemicals in water, lake bottoms and fish. What threat this poses for […]
When the bat challenged the Wiindigo
By Winona LaDuke Think of crisis as opportunity. The Chinese characters for crisis are wei ji. Danger and opportunity. That’s now. Take a breath, maybe look at the night sky and see if you can see any stars. Enjoy this moment and breathe when Mother Earth gets a breath from our closed factories. Let’s be […]
The long, exhausting battle against Enbridge for our lands and water
By Winona LaDuke Enbridge’s 7-year battle for a new pipe line has worn us all thin. We have poured out by the thousands, over 68,000 people went to testify against the Enbridge tar sands pipeline. We have driven thousands of miles. We have cried, talked about how much we love our water, and we have […]
Remembering Marvin Manypenny – a champion
By Winona LaDuke Pillars of courage hold up the justice we know we deserve. The passing of Marvin Manypenny, a lifelong champion of the rights of the Anishinaabe, reminds us of our responsibility to make our country and nations stronger. Manypenny died in White Earth on January 26 at the age of 72. In l988, […]
My courtship with cannabis/hemp: treat her well
By Winona LaDuke You can learn a lot from a plant. For the past four years I’ve been hanging out with cannabis plants. She’s an amazing plant. I have a bit of a maternal streak which seems to translate well to animals and plants (children, I am not so sure), and I’ve been growing cannabis. […]