Laying on the Line: Media Coverage of #StopLine3

Transcript

Lost in media coverage of the pandemic, wildfires, election, police brutality and abolition protests, perhaps the most detrimental environmental decision of the century was made in St. Paul, Minnesota in December of 2020. Governor Tim Waltz approved the crossing permits for Canadian multinational energy transport company Enbridge to begin constructing its 337 mile expansion to the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. The narrative is all too familiar after protests against the Keystone XL pipeline sparked national attention in 2016. The proposed route of this expansion of Line 3 passes through over a hundred clean bodies of water, wild rice farms that local and Indigenous communities rely on, and Indigenous territory protected by the 1855 Treaty with the Ojibwe people. Given growing climate concerns, it is surprising that the #StopLine3 movement hasn’t received more coverage. But frontline Anishinaabe people, an Indigenous group of multiple tribes that span across what is now called North America and Canada, have coopted their own media coverage of the movement centering Indigenous art and culture to represent the water and land they are protecting. Through livestreams, press releases, short films, and social media campaigns, Indigenous lead organizations dedicated to protecting their land and culture, share how they have no choice but to place their lives, culture, and art on the frontlines to stop the destruction of their lands and future of our earth.

Most media coverage of these direct actions protesting Line 3, are of blockades on the path of the pipeline construction or outside of Enbridge stations. These blockades, organized by Indigenous leaders and allied Water Protectors, often center around a featured visual or performance that speaks to the significance of the site to the Anishinaabe people and the extended impact of the threatened land. 

In this particular blockade the boat is a symbol of a traditional trade route. The Giniw Collective, an Indigenous women lead resistance group founded by Tara Houska, describes the boat as a wetland protector as it marks a path that Anishianaabe peoples used for trading for thousands of years. By placing this boat on land, it activates its literal and symbolic power for resistance, as it is fixed without the waterways to mobilize it. It serves both to protect the water it represents and grounds the water protectors during their protest. The sail of the boat is used as another visual advocate for the life force of water.  “GANAWENDEN NIBI” and its English translation “Protect the Water” are painted onto the sides of the sail, bordering a flying eagle and swimming muskie fish. The boat stands not only for the people that rely on these waters for transportation and irrigation, but for the ecosystems it houses. It is also important to note that this is not a motorized boat, but one that navigates via currents and manual power, another symbolic resistance to the fossil fuels it blocks.

This March 25, 2021 blockade at Lake George, Minnesota, features architecture rather than art. Seven indigenous water protectors stationed themselves in a prayer lodge surrounded by allies halting work at the active Line 3 construction site. Similar to the boat from the March 12, 2021 blockade in the Savannah State Forrest, the lodge is the central object sheltering the water protectors, representing Anishinaabe culture and history, and resisting the destruction of the land it sits on. 

Honor the Earth,  a Native organization that works to raise public awareness of other Native environmental groups, founded by Winona Laduke, is working on an initiative to build lodges throughout the North Country as sites part of their Water Protector Education and Culture Project. These new Waaginogaans are an offering to share space with the Indigenous Women of Honor the Earth to collaboratively envision a sustainable future that prioritizes local food systems and economies and invests in renewable energy.

For larger protests, often groups of Indigenous Water Protectors will wear costumes, navigate puppets, or dress in traditional clothing. This gathering on December 21st, 2020 in Pallasade Minnesota, lead by Winnona Laduke of Honor the Earth, was both a celebration of the winder solstice and to protest to Precision Pipeline’s transporting construction materials for Line 3. The thirteen reindeer lead the prayers and solstice ceremony as the representative relatives of the Anishinaabe land.  Each reindeer wears a cape decorated with a local animal and word of value, either Anishanaabe names of beings from the land such as Manoomin (wild rice) or of teachings such as honor and protect. These vibrant icons stand out against the rest of the white costume bringing specific energy from the wildlife and teachings they animate. The water protectors also acknowledge and express gratitude for the trees that provided the paper for the reindeers masks. Not only do their forms represent the wildlife in danger from Line 3 construction, but their materials do as well.

Performances in Line 3 protests work as a method to face violence with celebration of life. On January 29th of 2021 in Backus Minnesota, Water Protectors gather to both commemorate and bring awareness to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls campaign in the US. The gathering features performances by members of the Indigenous Environmental network  dressed in traditional Aztec clothing and dancing ahead of Water Protector to march down the highway towards an Enbridge Energy pipe yard. Their energized dances and vibrant attire shine out against the MMIWG tragedy in honoring of the family members and friends lost at the introduction of Line 3 man camps.

At the heart of these frontline actions, Indigenous activists and allying Water Protectors fight to protect the lives of the human and non-human beings that Line 3 threatens. Through different visual forms of representation, blockades featuring Indigenous architecture and transportation or protests and gatherings with performances that celebrate the lives of the animals and family members who cannot fight on the frontlines, each action promotes life above all else. As is not just the water and land at stake, but our lives.