[ Its time to end conquest and begin survival. The pipeline is
colonialism at work in the 21st century, but water protectors are
making waves. Its time to quit acting like Columbus.]
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FROM COLUMBUS TO ENBRIDGE: COLONIAL EXPLOITATION CONTINUES  
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Winona Laduke
October 9, 2021
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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_ It's time to end conquest and begin survival. The pipeline is
colonialism at work in the 21st century, but water protectors are
making waves. It's time to quit acting like Columbus. _

Sarah LittleRedfeather of Honor the Earth dances with an eagle
feather in front of the construction site for the Line 3 oil pipeline
near Palisade, Minnesota, on January 9, 2021., credit: Kerem Yucel/AFP
// Vox

 

It's somehow fitting irony as Indigenous Day approaches on Oct. 11 —
once known by another name — that a new Columbus is about to pump
oil through Line 3, the last tar sands pipeline. That is the
colonial-like corporation Enbridge.

Maybe President Joe Biden will think about this one and stop the dirty
oil from burning our rivers and air. The Indian wars could be over.
After all, no one needs this pipeline, plus it's the dirtiest and most
expensive oil in the world to extract and produce.

In one narrative, the Canadian corporation won. Columbus conquered
anew, proof that might and money remain the rulers.

"A new Columbus is about to pump oil through Line 3, the last tar
sands pipeline. That is the colonial-like corporation Enbridge."

Then, there's another. That's the Ballad of the Water Protectors — a
movement born in the battles in northern Minnesota and North Dakota, a
movement that will grow and transform the economy of the future.

How do we know this?Well, no one wants to finance more tar sands.
Other telling signs, and some new red flags, include:

The Canadian oil industry estimated that a lack of pipeline capacity
reduced the industry's income by tens of billions of dollars before
the pandemic started. The tar sands industry couldn't afford to
approve and build new extraction facilities during the curtailment,
and now, in part due to the pandemic, it still can't.

Uncertainty about Line 3 caused by Indigenous people and water
protectors encouraged massive divestment from the tar sands by
non-Canadian investors. Everybody from Shell Oil to the Koch brothers
bailed out. Last month, my alma mater, Harvard University, began
divestment of fossil fuels. Harvard wouldn't even divest from South
Africa, those stubborn old dudes. This is, well, monumental.

A recent joint report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil
Change International, found that Indigenous resistance alone has
stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least 25%
of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.

As a result of low oil prices, reduced income and divestment, tar
sands industry capital expenditures crashed. Almost all its capital
spending over the past five years was used for maintenance of existing
extraction facilities, not development of new facilities.

Put another way, the pipeline opposition campaign stopped the tar
sands industry dead in its tracks.

We all just recently learned two more blatant things about Enbridge
that should give everyone pause — especially our government leaders
like Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, whose
cowardly silence makes them complicit in this egregious crime.

First, after piercing an aquifer in January — an aquifer that is
still bleeding 100,000 gallons of water a day — Enbridge covered it
up for as long as it could until it was caught and fined $3.3 million
by the Department of Natural Resources. This is the kind of people we
are dealing with.

We also learned the pipeline isn't even adequately insured. The
Minnesota Public Utilities Commission required Enbridge to obtain $200
million of "environmental impairment liability" insurance, in addition
to general corporate liability coverage of $900 million, and to
include the state of Minnesota and several American Indian tribes as
additional insureds on its policies. But Enbridge recently submitted a
report to the Public Utilities Commission saying it will likely not be
able to obtain this insurance "in the near future."

That's baffling and problematic at best. I'm wondering what Harvard
Business School is thinking about that one. No insurance is not only
dangerous but illustrates again that the tar sands party is over. The
most expensive tar sands pipeline will be the last one to the U.S.

In 2018, due to a lack of pipeline capacity, the government of Alberta
ordered tar sands and other crude oil extraction facilities to curtail
production, initially by 325,000 barrels per day. This order meant
that each month about 10 million barrels of oil (and the carbon within
it) stayed in the ground. Although Alberta gradually ramped down the
curtailment, it lasted almost two years. Thank a water protector for
that.

We also delayed the Line 3 project by four years (Enbridge's initial
in-service date was 2017), such that any new tar sands development
efforts are now facing the near-term prospect of reduced oil demand
resulting from the escalating adoption of electric vehicles and
climate change policy developments, such as the Canadian carbon tax.

Delaying Line 3 by four years means that the tar sands industry now
faces a global crude oil market environment that is much less
favorable than in 2017.

Meanwhile, a Code Red has just been issued for the planet in the
latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. With
this warning, Minnesota's approval of the line, from the Public
Utilities Committee to the courts, makes us look like archaic climate
crisis co-conspirators.

We also look increasingly like a police state, especially in northern
Minnesota. The repressive police brutalization of Line 3 opponents
using rubber bullets, chemical sprays and "pain compliance" have come
to the attention of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination (CERD) for "Violations of Anishinaabe Human
Rights from Enbridge's Line 3."

This new investigation is likely to expose again into the future what
a truly rotten idea the escrow account established by Enbridge and the
PUC to militarize the north in the name of defending Line 3 really
was. Did we learn something from our whippings?

Approaching this day for uplifting Indigenous peoples, here's a
suggestion. It's time to end conquest and begin survival. Code Red for
the environment means that we need to move away from fossil fuels and
to organic agriculture, and to local and efficient energy.
Fortunately, tribal nations are leading the way in the north. It's
time to quit acting like Columbus.

_[WINONA LADUKE [[link removed]],
Executive Director of Honor the Earth, is an author, activist, former
US vice presidential candidate, and mother. She is an Anishinaabekwe
(Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who
lives and works on the White Earth Reservations. She has led a series
of horseback rides along tar sands pipeline routes that pass through
her people’s treaty areas in North Dakota.]_

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