Thousands of Indigenous leaders, Water Protectors and community activists gathered in Washington DC to call on President Biden and his administration to stop Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline and submit it to a full environmental review.
In addition to protesting at the White House, 50 Indigenous activists launched an occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior for the first time since a similar action took place in 1972.
“We will no longer allow the U.S. government to separate us from our relationship to the sacred knowledge of Mother Earth and all who depend on her,” reads a statement released by the Indigenous leaders at the occupation. “Her songs have no end, so we must continue the unfinished work of our ancestors who have walked on before us.”
The week of action also included the delivery of a petition with over one million signatures to the Army Corps of Engineers. The group of 100+ Water Protectors rallied, held ceremony with Anishinaabe drummers, and called on Jamie Pinkham, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works to conduct a full federal environmental impact statement to assess the Line 3 pipeline’s threats to human rights, water, and climate.
In addition, a coalition of major Indigenous and environmental leaders, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and 350.org, sent a letter to the White House, both demanding the administration immediately put an end to the pipeline.
“This pipeline is virtually identical to KXL in both substantive climate impact and symbolic importance. Construction of the project is an unfolding human rights crisis,” the letter reads. They went on to say that “operating it over its lifetime would significantly exacerbate the climate crisis. It fails any reasonable test of climate justice.”
Back in Minnesota, Enbridge once again skirted state environmental regulations, as the company failed to meet the Oct. 15 deadline for cleaning up the site of an aquifer that ruptured during construction of the pipeline.
You can read the full letter urging the Biden administration to put a stop to Line 3 here….
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