Native leaders drum and sing as water protectors and treaty people make their way to the headwaters of the Mississippi to defend the river against Enbridge’s proposed pipeline construction.
Pipeline markers designate where construction would cross under the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi has a mythical status in the American imagination. Indeed, it is almost impossible to hear “Mississippi River” and not think “mighty.” But all rivers start somewhere, and the river that is up to 100 feet deep and 2 miles across in the southern part of the US is, here at the headwaters in Northern Minnesota, only knee deep and just a few feet across. One could easily mistake the river for a backyard creek. Enbridge wants to construct a pipeline here, to carry Canadian Tar Sands oil to port in Wisconsin, crossing wetlands and numerous other waterways along the way. Both the pipeline and the construction itself pose substantial dangers to the environment.
The path of the pipeline would violate the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg who hunt, fish, and gather wild rice on this land. In defense of these treaty rights and in order to protect the land people showed up from across the United States to support the effort to stop construction.
It is hard to describe what it looks like to have over 1,000 people march down a hot (in the mid to upper 90s) rural Minnesota road surrounded by fireflies to a short bridge that crosses the Mississippi (perhaps the smallest bridge to do so).
“As Indigenous people, we have the inherent responsibility to protect the waters and all that is sacred, and as settlers — people who signed those treaties with our ancestors — (other Americans) have an obligation to uphold those treaties.”
— Nancy Beaulieu
Nancy Beaulieu leads the hike across the marshland to the headwaters of the Mississippi to exercise her treaty rights.
Following the march local indigenous leaders led people across the wetlands onto a pier that Enbridge constructed in preparation for drilling under the Mississippi.
There as part of the resistance efforts they talked of the importance of the land, the water, and respecting their treaty rights to the land.
Demonstrators pause on the bridge across the Mississippi looking out on the wetlands.
Water protectors make a Tobacco offering in the Mississippi.
Participants enjoy the Mississippi. Note the orange line overhead designating where the tar sands pipeline would be dug under the river.
As the sun fell and temperatures approached something near tolerable, in defense of their treaty rights leaders decided to set up camp and occupy the space here at the headwaters of the Mississippi. They named it “Fire Light Camp,” it lasted eight days before authorities on the behest of Enbridge had everyone removed.
Learn More
News Coverage
NYTimes Coverage: Includes information on the other action that day shutting down construction at a pump station.
Treaty Rights: Coverage from Truthout.