Red Lake rejected Enbridge financial deal to drop Line 3 lawsuits

A lot of the $56 million offer Enbridge should be doing anyway

Native nations are quite familiar with divide-and-conquer tactics.

The first treaty made in what would become Minnesota happened in 1805, two years after the Louisiana purchase. Lt. Zebulon Pike reported in his journal that two of the seven Dakota leaders present agreed to sell the site that would become Fort Snelling.

Two of seven, and Pike considered it a done deal.

The Star Tribune ran a story Monday on how Enbridge tried to buy off the Red Lake Nation, a key Line 3 opponent, and get it to drop its lawsuit against the project. Red Lake rejected it.

PUC Final Order Approving Line 3 is Racist

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission’s (PUC’s) Sept. 5 final order approving the Enbridge Line 3 crude oil pipeline is disturbing. It ignores significant arguments brought forward by Native nations, environmental groups and youth, cherry picking facts to justify its decision.

The order has many flaws in how it addresses climate change, environmental risks to our state’s clean waters, and other issues that will be explored in a later blog. This blog focuses on the order’s racist conclusion that the PUC doesn’t need to consider the pipeline’s treaty rights impacts.