When we climbed a fence to explosions of rubber bullets, it was under smoky skies and a red sun. Wildfires are raging across my homelands. It’s no longer just the west that burns. Northern Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes, is a land of dried-up rivers, record-setting temperatures, and fire advisories. Enbridge is steadily pumping the five billion gallons of water it needs to build Line 3 out of the water table up here, now reportedly turning to rural town aquifers since Minnesota’s DNR finally said sucking out what remains of the rivers is a bad idea.
Line 3 is almost constructed. Tribal nations and environmental activists have filed a lawsuit and appealed the Supreme Court. Construction has continued despite the voices of the Ojibwe, of the youth, of concerned citizens, of the more than 600 people arrested during a worldwide pandemic for trying to stop a tar sands pipeline from going through 75 miles of wetlands and 200 bodies of water.
History is unfolding with each passing day, with each passing hour, with every ecosystem that collapses, with every new climate refugee. We are choosing our memories—whether we took action, whether we stood by, whether we told ourselves it was just a job, whether we held onto comforts we knew came with extreme costs. Some of us are fighting back, with everything we have.
Indigenous peoples around the globe hold 80% of all earth’s biodiversity, despite being just 5% of all human beings. We are fighting for what remains, everywhere. The earth is a relative, not a resource. My ancestors fought back, or I would not exist. I owe the next generation the same. We all do.
Since this was written on August 2, the Hubbard County Sheriff used pain-compliance techniques on water protectors. A few weeks later, a new study confirmed that in order to meet the Paris Climate Agreement target, the majority of the world’s fossil fuels must remain in the ground. And Enbridge has announced that Line 3 will go into service on October 1.
For all the latest fasion News Click Here
