#bad river band of lake superior chippewa

[decolonize-the-everything]

"All our needs are met by this land, not by Enbridge.” That’s what Wenipashtaabe (Sandy Gokee), an Anishinaabe water protector, told the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) at a June 4 public hearing in Ashland, Wisconsin about a proposal to reroute Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline. Line 5 currently trespasses through the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s reservation in northern Wisconsin, and a federal judge last year ordered Enbridge to remove that segment of pipeline off the tribe’s land by June 2026. Enbridge’s plan is to reroute the pipeline, but the company needs approval from the USACE first.

[...]At the meeting, Tribal leaders and environmental advocates from across the region voiced concern about the proposed reroute. That’s because Line 5 poses an environmental risk within Tribal boundaries—and the reroute wouldn’t change this, because it would still be located within the larger Bad River watershed. In other words, an oil spill in that area would still drain into the Bad River, endangering wetlands and groundwater along the river’s course to Lake Superior. “We said off the watershed. You said off the reservation,” Gokee told the USACE at the public hearing. The more than 70-year-old pipeline is 20 years past its expiration date. In some places, including the point where the pipeline intersects with a “meander” in the Bad River, it is in imminent danger of rupture.

Folks aren’t counting on Enbridge to fix this, because the Canadian energy company has a terrible track record. A rupture in another major Enbridge pipeline, 6B, caused the 2010 Kalamazoo River spill, which dumped nearly a million gallons of crude oil into the water over the course of 18 hours before Michigan authorities (not Enbridge) reported the spill. It’s one of the largest inland oil spills in US history. Construction along Enbridge’s Line 3 has caused ongoing harm in Minnesota, where Enbridge contractors released toxic fracking fluids while drilling under waterways, and destroyed wetlands.

The proposed new segment of Line 5 would cross and endanger nearly 200 bodies of water and over 100 acres of wetland as it passes through Ashland and Iron Counties. The $450 million reroute would require temporarily and permanently discharging fill material into wetlands, horizontal drilling under the White River (which flows into the Bad River), and would cause the loss or alteration of wetlands in the 30- to 50-foot wide maintenance corridor surrounding the pipeline, USACE states in an analysis of the plan.

“I can drink the water here now. Let’s keep it that way,” added Gokee at the public hearing.

You can donate directly to the tribe to help them on Defend the Bad River dot org and you can read more about their treaties and their history on the Bad River Band website. Absolutely utilize the tools available to you to educate yourself about this further, please and spread the word!

Their homepage

Bonus materials;

The oil pipeline laying in the Straits of Mackinac — is 21 years past it’s intended lifespan. A Line 5 rupture would impact 700 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, take years to clean up, and would devastate our Great Lakes economy — putting 214,000 Michigan tourism jobs at risk. The Great Lakes are 20% of the world’s freshwater — we can’t afford to contaminate them with oil.

Their PDF handout about the case:

I want to highlight their demands for people who just saw that wall of text and skipped it cuz this is important:

This is a decently nuanced 14 minute interview about how turning on Line 3 affected native communities; how most are still just taking actions to survive through ongoing oppression and colonization, how activism isnt a luxury a lot of people can afford with mouths to feed and systemic oppression keeping them in cycles of poverty.

Stand with the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

It shouldn't be on them to fight Enbridge on their own and nobody should be forced to choose between their people or their planet. Uplift their voices and make their demands known and make it known that they're supported and they're not alone.

[wausaupilot]

DNR releases final environmental impact statement on pipeline project

After 4 years and thousands of comments, DNR releases final environmental impact statement on Line 5:

By Danielle Kaeding | Wisconsin Public Radio State environmental regulators released a final environmental impact statement Friday on a Canadian energy firm’s plans to reroute an oil and gas pipeline around a northern Wisconsin tribe’s reservation. In 2019, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa sued Canadian firm Enbridge in federal court to shut down and remove the 70-year-old Line 5 on…

[fatehbaz]

---

Native American tribes from Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario have come together to call for an end to the Line 5 pipeline.

The Enbridge Line 5 crude oil pipeline, first constructed in 1953, stretches from Wisconsin through 645 miles of Michigan and ends in Sarnia, Ontario. Part of the pipeline travels underwater through the Straits of Mackinac.

In recent years, the pipeline's continued operation has become a source of controversy. Many tribal nations and communities claim that the pipeline goes through their traditional territories. The Straits area in particular is considered a place of significant cultural and historical importance to many native groups, including the Anishinaabe. According to tribal leaders, the pipeline poses a major and direct threat to the ecosystems along its path.

“The Straits of Mackinac are [...] sacred from both a cultural and historical perspective in the formation of the Anishinaabe people,” said Austin Lowes, chairperson of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, in a statement. “Protecting the Straits is also a matter of the utmost environmental and economic importance — both to our people and the state of Michigan.”

Tribal leaders and other environmental groups have publicly opposed the pipeline for many years and have called for the pipeline to be shut down.

Supporters of the pipeline point out that it transports 540,000 barrels of light crude oil and natural gas liquids through Line 5 on a daily basis. [...]

In an effort to address safety concerns, Enbridge has proposed an underwater tunnel to house the portion of Line 5 that runs under the Straits of Mackinac. [...] Critics of the tunnel project say no oil should be transported through the Straits at all, as a spill could have a devastating impact on more than 700 miles of Great Lakes shoreline. [...]

Previous attempts to shut down the pipeline have been stopped through various means, mostly the 1977 Transit Pipeline Treaty between Canada and the United States.

The latest attempt saw 51 tribal organizations from Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario submit a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council. This report, dated April 4, claims that the Government of Canada is violating the human rights of Indigenous peoples through its continuous support for Line 5.

The report was submitted to be considered during Canada's upcoming Universal Periodic Review, conducted by the United Nations. As a United Nations member state, Canada is required to be evaluated for its human rights record on a regular basis.

Canada's Universal Periodic Review will take place this year on Nov. 6-17.

The 51 different tribal organizations that signed the report include: The Anishinabek Nation, which represents 39 First Nations throughout the province of Ontario, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa & Chippewa Indians, Hannahville Indian Community, Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe and Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

---

Headline and text by: Brendan Wiesner. “Michigan, Wisconsin and Canadian tribes come together to fight Line 5.” Yahoo! News. 8 April 2023. Article originally appeared on The Sault News with the title “Great Lakes tribes send report to United Nations to fight Line 5.” [Some paragraph breaks and contractions added by me.]

Context:

Line 3 brings oil from Alberta to Lake Superior. Then, Line 5 brings the fossil fuel from the Duluth area to the Detroit/Windsor area in Ontario.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

“This is the last turn and the end of the fourth hill of life, when Bad River, as a spirit, transforms into something other, something extraordinary,” Mike Wiggins said as he rounded a final bend in one of the largest and most pristine wetlands on the shores of Lake Superior, one of the biggest freshwater lakes in the world.

It’s “similar to our spiritual journey off this planet into something other and extraordinary.”

From the driver’s seat of his small fishing boat, Wiggins, the former chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, contemplated his surroundings with awe as a bald eagle soared overhead.

Beds of wild rice, a key food source and cultural pillar of the Bad River tribe, danced in his wake, glinting under the afternoon sun and nearly ready for harvest. 

“This is a power place,” he said as he blasted Unbound, a recently released album by musicians including fellow Bad River tribal member Dylan Jennings. “It’s just no place for an oil pipeline.”

It has one, though. Seventy-one years ago, Lakehead Pipeline, a predecessor to Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, commissioned the construction of Line 5, a 30-inch diameter crude oil pipeline that transports up to 540,000 barrels of hydrocarbons per day from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. The 645-mile line is part of a network that originates more than a thousand miles to the northwest in the oil fields of Alberta and, in the case of Line 5, ends back in Canada. It includes a 12-mile stretch that bisects the Bad River reservation, which is heavily forested with river crossings and large swaths of wetlands.

Any spill from the pipeline would drain into the Bad River and Kakagon Sloughs, where Wiggins fished. Known as the “Everglades of the North,” the area is protected under an international environmental agreement as well as multiple treaties between the U.S. and the Chippewa people, also known as the Ojibwe.

The path through the reservation was originally approved by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, more than a dozen easements granted to the pipeline, which was completed in 1953, have since expired.

In 2017, the Bad River tribal council voted unanimously not to renew them. Two years later, the tribe sued to have the pipeline removed from the reservation. The ongoing “David vs. Goliath” legal battle was chronicled in Bad River, a recent documentary.

In 2023, Judge William Conley of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled in favor of the tribe and gave Enbridge three years to stop pumping oil through the reservation. The pipeline company has appealed the ruling.  

[gadgetsforusesblog]

Tribe in Wisconsin urges federal judge to shut down oil pipeline

Lawyers for a Wisconsin Indian tribe will argue Thursday that a federal judge must order an energy company to shut down an oil pipeline that the tribe says is at imminent risk of exposure from erosion and cracks in reservation land. The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa last week asked U.S. District Judge William Conley to issue an emergency ruling forcing Enbridge to close the Line 5…

[txoilfieldnews]

Enbridge, Chippewa Tribe Ordered to Cooperate on Spill Risk Plan for Line 5 Conduit

Enbridge, Chippewa Tribe Ordered to Cooperate on Spill Risk Plan for Line 5 Conduit

After rejecting a call in September to shut off Enbridge Inc.’s cross-border Line 5, a federal court in Wisconsin has directed the pipeline company and the Lake Superior Chippewa’s Bad River Band to work together on a spill risk reduction plan for the 540,000 b/d oil conduit. U.S. District Court Judge William Conley of the Western District of Wisconsin said the Chippewa tribe needed to adopt the…

[antoine-roquentin]

Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers has signed a bill making it a felony to trespass on the grounds of an oil or gas pipeline. Critics say the bill was inspired by ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — and pushed through the Wisconsin legislature by the American Petroleum Institute. Opponents of the law include members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation is crossed by the Enbridge Line 5 tar sands oil pipeline. The tribe’s chair, Mike Wiggins, said, “Over and over, we’ve seen peaceful, nonviolent protests met with militarization, threats of violence and actual violence from some of these corporate mechanisms.”

[nativenewsonline]

Mashkiiziibi (Bad River) Band Files Suit Against Enbridge

Mashkiiziibi (Bad River) Band Files Suit Against Enbridge

Published July 28, 2019 Tribe asserts invaluable resources at stake and calls for stopping operation and decommissioning of Line 5 at Bad River, WI ODANAH, Wis.—  The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa filed suit against Enbridge last Tuesday to force the decommissioning and removal of the Line 5 pipeline, which runs across 12 miles of sensitive habitat in the Bad River Reservation.…

[ravnlghtft]

Right now, we have an opportunity to call on officials to protect the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and residents of northern Wisconsin. We are demanding the protection of drinking water aquifers, Lake Superior fisheries, family farms, the Apostle Islands, and the Great Lakes.

Canadian oil company Enbridge has proposed to reroute its Line 5 tar sands pipeline through more than 180 waterways that flow into the Bad River Reservation and Lake Superior, despite the Bad River Tribe’s strong opposition. This is morally unacceptable.

Submit your comment today—call on officials to uphold the federal trust responsibility to the Bad River Tribe and reject Line 5.

When you submit this form, your letter will be delivered to both the Biden Administration and Wisconsin DNR. This letter covers all the key points for both agencies.

[nativeyoutubesubscribe]

Liked on YouTube: Living Earth Festival 2018 - Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe https://youtu.be/NkNALNg5PKQ

[michaelaconley]

Healthy Lifestyles Activities Coordinator - BAD RIVER BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR TRIBE OF CHIPPEWA - Odanah, WI

New Post has been published on https://www.hpcareer.net/job/healthy-lifestyles-activities-coordinator-bad-river-band-of-lake-superior-tribe-of-chippewa-odanah-wi/

Healthy Lifestyles Activities Coordinator - BAD RIVER BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR TRIBE OF CHIPPEWA - Odanah, WI

Teach physical activity, diabetes prevention, and diabetes education to youth up to age 19years of age. Hourly Rate: $14.00 Full Time: 40Hrs/Week*. $14 an hour From Indeed – Wed, 25 Aug 2021 16:10:32 GMT – View all Odanah, WI jobs

[wausaupilot]

Documentary shows Bad River Band’s resilience as Line 5 battle continues

As the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa continues its case against Canadian pipeline company Enbridge and its controversial Line 5 pipeline, a new film is documenting the band’s history of resistance.

by Kyle Davidson, Wisconsin Examiner March 15, 2024 As the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa continues its case against Canadian pipeline company Enbridge and its controversial Line 5 pipeline, a new film is documenting the band’s history of resistance in order to protect the Bad River and its tribal sovereignty. Written and directed by Mary Mazzio and narrated by Indigenous activist and…

[rjzimmerman]

Trailer for the documentary, Bad River. Description from its producer, the National Wildlife Federation:

Bad River, a documentary film set for release on March 15, 2024, delves into the real-life David-and-Goliath battle over the Line 5 Pipeline between the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Enbridge, a massive pipeline company. The film highlights the Bad River Band's fight to protect their land from potential environmental catastrophe caused by the pipeline, which traverses their reservation and sits, exposed, near an eroding part of the Bad River. Despite the Band's legal efforts and the clear risks posed by the pipeline's deteriorating condition, the struggle persists in both legal and political arenas.

I'm seeing that you can watch the full documentary on Xfinity for consumer home use only and and on Vimeo.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Justice for Jason Pero! Stop Wisconsin's long, racist war on Native American youth!

Mother questions why 14-year-old Jason Pero fatally shot by officer

Family members of a 14-year-old boy fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy on a northern Wisconsin reservation questioned on Thursday why the teen, who they describe as loving and kind, was gunned down. Holly Gauthier said authorities have provided few details about the death of her son, 14-year-old Jason Pero, an 8th grader who died on the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s reservation Wednesday.

“(There is) no reason you can justify shooting a 14-year-old boy,” Gauthier said. Her son was home sick from school Wednesday and staying at his grandparents’ house, she added. Gauthier said she doesn’t know why Jason was outside. The state Justice Department said a knife was recovered at the scene of the shooting. Family members questioned whether Pero had a knife. Pero’s grandfather, Alan Pero, described Jason as someone who “never had one mean bone in his body.” Gauthier said her son was “a big teddy bear” and “everybody loved him.” 

[wausaupilot]

State board approves loan for northern Wisconsin town affected by tribal tax ruling

The removal of tribal properties from the tax rolls was a victory for tribal sovereignty, but it has generated anger among residents as nontribal residents have seen their tax bills skyrocket.

By Danielle Kaeding | Wisconsin Public Radio A northern Wisconsin town has been granted a $610,000 loan by the state public lands board to ease financial challenges resulting from a federal court ruling that removed tribal residents from the tax rolls. Last summer, a federal appeals court ruled the state could no longer tax tribal properties on reservation lands of four northern Wisconsin…

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

Justice for Jason Pero!

Mother questions why 14-year-old Jason Pero fatally shot by officer

Family members of a 14-year-old boy fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy on a northern Wisconsin reservation questioned on Thursday why the teen, who they describe as loving and kind, was gunned down. Holly Gauthier said authorities have provided few details about the death of her son, 14-year-old Jason Pero, an 8th grader who died on the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s reservation Wednesday.

“(There is) no reason you can justify shooting a 14-year-old boy,” Gauthier said. Her son was home sick from school Wednesday and staying at his grandparents’ house, she added. Gauthier said she doesn’t know why Jason was outside. The state Justice Department said a knife was recovered at the scene of the shooting. Family members questioned whether Pero had a knife. Pero’s grandfather, Alan Pero, described Jason as someone who “never had one mean bone in his body.” Gauthier said her son was “a big teddy bear” and “everybody loved him.”