Ecologue

In 2014, Enbridge, an energy infrastructure company, began the permitting process for Line 3, a pipeline that would replace one from the 1960s and extend through Minnesota and into Wisconsin. It would ship tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wisconsin. They claim this new pipeline would alleviate the concerns of the original one spilling and leaking, but opponents argue that creating new would only delay the inevitable.

According to the website, Stop Line 3, this pipeline would negatively impact the climate change of Minnesota more than improve the economy of the state, violating treaty rights with the Anishinaabe peoples and nations in its path. In an article published by the Minnesota Post, “Frank Bibeau, an attorney for the White Earth Band, said he believes that the significance of the wild rice waters to Minnesota tribes could be enough to stop the new Line 3 pipeline. Wild rice is the only protected crop mentioned in the 1837 treaty that ceded Ojibwe and Dakota land and established reservations in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin.”

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Most recently, activists such as Mark Ruffalo (yes, that Mark Ruffalo), Winona LaDuke, and Loren Blackford, along with hundreds of actors, musicians, environmentalists, and community leaders urged President Biden and Jaime Pinkham of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to cancel Line 3 as they did with the Keystone XL.

Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary’s River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians (ctsi.nsn.us).