More than 2,000 water protectors joined together to help halt Enbridge’s Line 3 toxic tar sands pipeline yesterday. Indigenous leaders and their allies marched nonviolently in Minnesota’s largest anti-pipeline action.
After marching for nearly two miles from their staging area to the Mississippi River, indigenous leaders spoke to the crowd and demanded political leaders hear their voices over environmental, and other, concerns about continued construction of the pipeline, reports Perham Focus.
“Our Mother is calling out, it’s time for us to listen or do the work to remember how. It’s also time for us to all stand with our words. The situation is urgent, it requires urgent response. Find your bravery, find your community, find your truth. Stand with us and Stop Line 3,” says Tara Houska for Giniw Collective.
According to Common Dreams, the treaty ceremony at the headwaters, led by the RISE Coalition, was followed by remarks from the visiting celebrities alongside Bill McKibben, Dawn Goodwin, and Nancy Beaulieau. Participants are now holding space on the easement along the banks of the Mississippi and are prepared to stay.
“A spill, a rupture will harm the environment in this area. Climate change, that oil is the dirtiest oil and will emit so much CO2 into our environment it would be equal to building 50 new coal plants,” says Dawn Goodwin, co-founder of RISE.
Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, is preparing to drill under 22 Minnesota rivers and over 200 other water bodies threatening ecosystems and the climate.
The Biden administration has the power to stop the advance of Line 3 and reexamine the permit, ask the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to reexamine this because they haven’t done an adequate environmental impact assessment, a climate assessment, and a justice assessment. This is exactly what’s needed, I just left the other site where people are chained to the equipment, and that is what changes things … they have so many bodies of water that they are going to try to put pipelines under, and we have to give them heartburn at every single one,” says Jane Fonda.
COMMENTS