One of the last criminal cases related to Enbridge Line 3 will start Monday, May 8, in Clearwater County.
Defendants in what is known as the Fire Light Treaty Encampment have created a website to explain their case and lift up the importance on non-Indigenous peoples being treaty partners and standing up to honor treaty rights. Click here for the website.
Continue readingA year ago June, Indigenous leaders set up Camp Fire Light, an eight-day ceremonial camp held near the Mississippi headwaters. They established it to exercise their treaty rights to hunt, fish, gather, and occupy lands they ceded to the United States. They invited non-Indigenous allies to participate in support of treaty rights.
Camp Fire Light participants camped on the wooden matting Enbridge Energy installed to build the Line 3 tar sands pipeline under the Mississippi and surrounding wetlands.
Many Camp Firelight participants received criminal trespass charges in Clearwater County.
Several Indigenous participants had their cases transferred from Clearwater County District Court to White Earth Tribal Court, including Nancy Beaulieu, Justin Keezer, and Todd Thompson.
These three defendants asked the Tribal Court to dismiss their cases “on grounds that their actions were lawful exercises of sovereign Indigenous rights reserved in the 1855 Treaty and protected nonviolent direct action pursuant to the White Earth Tribal Code,” according to a news release issued on their behalf.
Last week, White Earth Tribal Court Judge David DeGroat granted their motion and dismissed their case.
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Native Nations and environmental groups opposed to the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline announced Wednesday they would appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court to overturn the pipeline’s Certificate of Need and Route Permit.
One notable advocate that had sued to stop Line 3 dropped out this time: The Minnesota Department of Commerce. Commerce represented the public interest before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). It has consistently argued that Enbridge failed to prove that future oil demand justified building the new and larger Line 3.
Those continuing litigation to overturn the PUC’s Line 3 permits are: The White Earth Band of Ojibwe, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, the Sierra Club, Honor the Earth, Friends of the Headwaters, and Youth Climate Interveners.
Gov. Tim Walz appears to have caved to political pressure. His administration’s decision to drop the appeal emphasizes what’s been clear for a while: In spite of promises, Walz is not taking climate damage or treaty rights seriously.
In related news, top elected leaders from the White Earth Nation came to the Capitol today to press the Walz administration for nation-to-nation consultation around Line 3.
Continue readingRepublican U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis held an Enbridge Line 3 Town Hall meeting today in Bemidji; in spite of the statewide mask mandate for indoor gatherings, almost none of the 50 people in attendance wore masks, according to a report by Lakeland PBS. The event was held at the DoubleTree Hotel Conference Room.
Nancy Beaulieu, an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, attended the event and tried unsuccessfully to get either the hotel staff or Bemidji police to enforce the mask mandate. Beaulieu also is the northern Minnesota organizer for MN350 and works to stop the Line 3 pipeline. (Full disclosure: The blog’s author is a colleague of Beaulieu’s, Facebook friends, and we have worked together on Stop Line 3 efforts.)
Beaulieu’s efforts to get the mask mandate enforced shows just how empty the mandate is, at least in Bemidji.
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