Featured Stories – Stop Line 3 – From San Francisco to Minnesota

Stop Line 3 – From Minnesota

– Indigenous women have been leading the battle to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline for many years.  In the spring of 2021, the Canadian company Enbridge began drilling under numerous waterways when final approvals were received.  The pipeline crosses more than 200 bodies of water, including the Mississippi and other major rivers.  As battles continued in the courts, “Water Protectors” locked down to drilling equipment, blockaded access to worksites and sent out a call for people across the country to come to Minnesota to stand with them.

In May, the Bay Area based group 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations, and their sister group of Lakota Grandmothers from South Dakota, answered the call and met up in Minnesota to stand with the Anishinaabe women putting so much on the line.

By August, after almost 600 arrests, none of the appeals to Governor Walz and President Biden had been acted upon and completion of the pipeline was imminent.  On August 7th, the Treaty People Walk for Water began at the headlands of the Mississippi with the message to both Walz and Biden to use their authority to halt the pipeline before the tar sand oil was allowed to flow.  18 days and 256 miles later, the walkers were joined by thousands of others for the final miles to the Minnesota State Capital, where numerous teepees had been set up on the capital lawn and tribes were gathered in ceremony.

(Photos of the walk shown here are from the final 5 days of the walk.)

#DefundLine3  #HonorTheTreaties  #ProtectTheSacred  #WaterIsLife

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Indigenous led Treaty People Walk for Water is joined by thousands as it approaches the MN capital in a powerful silent, prayerful march.

Grandmothers Stand with Water Protectors and Future Generations

Minnesota Governors’ Mansion – May 26, 2021

In May 2021, members of the San Francisco Bay Area group 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations* and their sister group of Lakota grandmothers from South Dakota traveled to Northern Minnesota to stand together with the “Water Protectors” in the Indigenous women led struggle to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline**.  At stake in the struggle are treaty rights, the protection of land, water and wild rice beds, and a habitable climate for future generations.  This video captures a rally in front of the Minnesota governor’s mansion where 1000 Grandmothers, Lakota grandmothers, grandmothers from the Twin Cities and Anishinaabe grandmothers joined together to call on the governor to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline and honor his own words:  “Any line that goes through treaty lands is a nonstarter for me”. 

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* 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations – “We are elder women and allies stepping up to the urgency of the climate crisis. We act in support of the rights of Native Americans and other frontline communities. We believe that we cannot address the climate crisis without addressing systemic racism. That is what climate justice means to us.”

** Line 3 tar sands pipeline – The Line 3 pipeline originates in Alberta, Canada and spans Minnesota, ending in Superior, Wisconsin.  It is intended to carry an average of 760,000 barrels per day of one of the dirtiest fuels on earth, tar sands crude.  While this has been presented as a project to replace existing problematic pipes, the new pipes are larger and much of the route is new, crossing pristine watersheds.  This will lock in decades of increased tar sands production in a time of climate crisis, when the world needs to transition quickly off fossil fuels.