As of 2019, 26,545 miles of oil and gas pipelines were proposed or planned, and another 9,542 were already under construction in North America. Countless more existing pipelines leak pollutants into the air and soil every day. Not only does further oil and gas development directly interfere with the policies and investments necessary to tackle climate change, the pipelines cross Indigenous lands; many cross lands whose use is governed by treaties.
In Minnesota, Enbridge’s Line 3 faced tremendous public pushback—countless demonstrations against the pipeline were held, defending water and land resources that are critical for many Indigenous communities. This Enbridge replacement project cuts through an area of northern Minnesota on and near treaty lands belonging to the Ojibwe and Anishinaabe First Nations, but no analysis (required under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Policy Act, and tribal treaty rights) has been done to examine the impacts of the project. The Ojibwe and Anishinaabe signed treaties with the United States government that relinquished ownership of 10 million acres of northern Minnesota lake country in 1855. However, the Tribes retained the right to hunt, fish, gather, and hold ceremonies on the land. In only the second “rights of nature” case ever brought to trial, the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe sued the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on behalf of wild rice; the case argues that nature itself has the right to exist and flourish and that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources violated the rights of manoomin (wild rice), which grows in lakes. The plaintiff’s case described allowing Enbridge to pump up to 5 billion gallons of groundwater as an egregious decision on the part of the State.
The current Line 3 pipeline caused the United States’ largest inland oil spill in 1991; in total, 33 spills have occurred on Line 3 since 1968, totaling more than 1 million gallons of spilled oil. With the new line crisscrossing several waterways, including the Mississippi River, 290 interconnected streams and rivers are jeopardized.
In addition, the sudden influx of pipeline workers into predominantly poor and rural Indigenous communities coincides with increases in violence, illicit drugs, and sex trafficking. Multiple human trafficking “sting operations” have resulted in arrests including at least four Line 3 workers in 2021 alone. A crisis center for Northwest Minnesota had responded to over 40 reports of harassment against women and girls by Line 3 workers as of June 2021; construction began in December 2020. Before the Line 3 project was launched, Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission acknowledged that “cash rich” workers on projects increases the risk of sex trafficking and yet still permitted the project to go forward. Enbridge reimbursed a local Violence Intervention Project for the expense of transportation and hotel costs to get the victims to safety after three assaults by Line 3 workers. But the influx of pipeline workers also crowds local hotels and limits safe rooms that could be used to house women facing violence. Tribal courts are limited by Federal law in their ability to protect women from rapists, even when there is sufficient evidence to result in a conviction: the courts cannot pass sentences greater than five years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department has only prosecuted 35 percent of rapes reported on Tribal lands. Of the 5,712 reported cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women nationwide in 2016, just 116 were logged in Justice Department databases.
By contrast, law enforcement’s response to the protests against the pipeline have emphasized punitive action. In Minnesota the Public Utilities Commission has required Enbridge to reimburse police for responding to protests, giving local police a perverse incentive to arrest protestors demonstrating against the pipeline. As of October 2021, $2.4 million had been paid by Enbridge to U.S. police and records indicate the company met frequently with police to discuss ongoing gatherings and protests. Reimbursements were requested for batons, tear gas, and flash-bang devices. Moreover, information on police activities has been classified as “security information,” leaving it ineligible for public records requests, making these reimbursements all the more difficult to track.
Indigenous communities opposing existing and proposed gas and oil pipelines emphasize their lack of control over their own lands, including: treaty rights to natural resources, the distribution of benefits and costs of development on their land, and their own safety and autonomy. Winning the cancellation of new pipeline projects is an important first step. In a previous post, we also highlighted the importance of Tribal access to capital and financing so that they can invest in renewable alternatives to oil and gas. The ability to own the new resources if they so choose is crucial to ensuring Tribes can access the benefits of investment in generation and efficiency as they strive for a future without climate change and for the protection of their lands. And that ownership may also be key to preventing fossil-fuel-intensive investment projects— particularly pipelines and the violence they bring—from harming other indigenous communities in the future.
Liz Stanton, PhD.
Director and Senior Economist
Chirag Lala
Researcher
This is a part of the AEC Blog series