Indigenous Groups Vow to Keep Resisting as Construction Is Approved for Enbridge Tar Sands Pipeline

A massive fight is brewing in Minnesota against the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit for the project this week.

After years of resistance, pipeline construction is now set to begin by the end of the month despite the concerns of Indigenous communities, who say it would violate tribal sovereignty and contaminate the land and water.

The controversial proposed pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to a terminal in Superior, Wisconsin, cutting through Indigenous territory in Minnesota and running under more than 200 streams.

Construction could also bring thousands of temporary workers to Minnesota even as COVID-19 cases are spiking in the state. “It’s been a long, seven-year fight against this particular project,” says Tara Houska, an Indigenous lawyer, activist and founder of the Giniw Collective, who is Ojibwe from Couchiching First Nation.

Minnesota leaders, she says, “are willing to put our children’s futures on the line to allow through a Canadian corporation to do as it wishes and to suppress the rights of our citizens.”

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