~~ posted for dmorista ~~
Native-led water protectors have been fighting to stop construction on the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. Enbridge, the Canadian multinational behind the pipeline, is violating Native treaties and is already responsible for one of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history. Line 3 now threatens spillage in Indigenous environments as well as the Mississippi River.
One Native participant in these actions, Jaike SpottedWolf, traveled from the Pacific Northwest
to Minnesota to support this fight, and spoke about this experience with Left Voice’s Sam
Carliner. The interview covers the character of the actions on the ground and how they connect
to the larger history of colonial genocide against Native communities, which persists today.
SC: What is Line 3 and why are there a lot of actions around it right now?
JS: Line 3 is a pipeline from Canada down into the Gulf of Mexico through the state of
Minnesota. And it’s a perpetuation of pipelines that run through key reservation land throughout
the United States. It’s like a new form of genocide. Every pipeline so far that has been
implemented in the United States threatens water. This is stuff that you can’t just clean up and
get back to normal in terms of resource extraction. For example, there are uranium mines in
Diné nation that poison the water so much that there’s not enough drinking water and there are
exorbitant cancer rates. So where pipelines and mines are concerned, people who live near the
m, i.e., Native Americans, are left with having to survive in those really hostile environmental
conditions. Minnesota is in a state of emergency in terms of drought because they don’t have
enough water. The Pacific Northwest, where I live, does have water. But we also have record
fire seasons. Small towns on reservations are literally burning up. So this is all oriented around
climate change and indigeneity.
SC: What is your background as an activist, and why is it important for you to show
solidarity with these protests in Minnesota?
JS: I am Indigenous. I grew up in southern Idaho and moved to Seattle, where I lived, in 1997.
And I guess my own connection is to generational trauma and what I’ve been exposed to in my
native family in terms of preventable deaths. Not to say that that’s necessarily related to the
environment, but when treaties are broken and the government comes in and says, “We don’t
care what the treaty said or what your tribe said about the treaty. We are going to let this
company do what it’s going to do anyway” — it’s violating that Indigenous person’s culture,
their tradition, and everything that they know. Poverty is extremely high because the economy
doesn’t exist the way it does in white America. So the depression, the anxiety, the mental health
issues lead to self medicating, which leads to the bigger picture, which is, you know, youth
dying, very young, suicide rates skyrocketing, and we’ve all lost our culture. Sorrow, heartbreak,
devastation exist in Indigenous communities across the United States, but again, the
surrounding culture isn’t even aware of it. So that’s what compelled me to become active in my
own circles. And then, of course, when the riots broke out last year, the protests, I found an
opportunity to expose more of what’s happening in indigeneity and begin speaking at a couple
of different marches. I couldn’t make it out to Standing Rock, so I saw this opportunity and I just
took it to come out and help.
SC: What type of response have you gotten from the cops, the state, and Enbridge
surrounding these actions?
JS: I’ve heard of an activist who was in the media recently who was taken out of a car, put into
a headlock, and had bruises on them. Their camera was confiscated for evidence. This is a
known media person with credentials that was videoing a different action. So they’ll go to those
lengths. On somebody’s private camp where they own the land, cops came in from Hubbard
County and kettled the protesters overnight. They restricted people from being able to come
and go, and they restricted food and drink from being brought into the camp as a means of
keeping people quiet. So it can be really violent. We had one sheriff, however, up in a different
county that honors the treaties. That is how we were allowed to create what they call Camp
Fire Light and hold a ceremony there for eight days. He allowed us — I shouldn’t even say he
allowed us. He didn’t abuse the law. And we were able to occupy a space Enbridge had built.
When we knew we were able to hold that space, we started a ceremony. Some ceremonies
lasted for days. We were able to be there for eight days until Enbridge delivered a letter of
eviction, saying that we needed to remove ourselves from the land.
They are hustling to build this pipeline on the ground because they know the deadline is coming
. They know we’ve been talking to the EPA. They know I flew down to Washington, DC, with
three other activists from Minnesota. We did speak with the head of the EPA. Biden was
supposed to be there. They know that we’re talking to these people and that they’ve got a very
short timetable. So we’ve got about two weeks before the pipe is laid, and then things are
closer to up and running than they ever have been within this particular pipeline.
SC: Biden painted himself as much better on climate issues, and there was a lot of hype
around him appointing Deb Haaland to his cabinet and his talk of actually discussing
racism. What do you think his response to Line 3 or perhaps lack thereof says?
JS: I mean, he lied. I’m not shocked. He’s another white male president. He’s another in a long
line of politicians who have had to say what they knew the United States needed to hear at that
time in order to get elected. He knew that he had to be the opposite of Trump, and that that
would mean protecting the climate. That would mean talking about race, electing people into his
cabinet, appointing them. But when we look at his history, he’s not a huge fan of critical race
theory or intersectionality or doing anything to benefit communities. So why would he change all
of a sudden? You know, like, I don’t really believe that somebody who’s as old as he is, who has
been in office as long as he has, is all of a sudden going to change. He still has to please a large
part of the House and the Senate. And he’s going to do that because politicians love to kowtow.
And I hate to admit that, but I see him as nothing but a complete fake and a liar at this point. And
if I could have him hear those words, I would be elated. He’s destroying Indigenous communities
by doing nothing.
SC: What is it like at the camp?
JS: Camp Fire Light was shut down by an eviction notice almost three weeks ago. But the other
camp still stands. So I’ve been a resident, if you will, of Camp Migizi since May 19. What that
looks like, you know, the people do tend to shift weekly, sometimes daily. Some people can be
there for Saturday and Sunday. Some people are able to stay for months. We’re bringing in our
own supplies and everything from tents to lanterns to bathroom supplies to aid, anything that you
know is essential for survival. And it looks a lot like Indigenous femmes running this movement.
Three of us are Two Spirit, that’s essentially what your nonbinary equivalent would be in
Indigenous circles. So these camps are being run by Indigenous people, so there’s that element
to it that’s very different from that white patriarchy that we’re used to seeing in boardrooms and
places of authority and politics. There’s no hierarchy in decision-making. It’s not up to one
person. There’s a lot of community hashing all this out with a lot of discussion. Depending on
what job needs to be done, people will show up and contribute. This community is coming back
to Indigenous roots where you’re trading again, you’re pitching in because the job needs to be
done, not because you’re making money for it. The labor is not exploitative. It’s whatever your
body is able to bring at the moment and within your abilities. And there’s no shame around what
you can or can’t do.
SC: Did some of the discussions of racism from last summer have an impact on some of
the people who are showing up to these actions?
JS: I do have to believe that, because it was long and ongoing and as much as, you know, Covid
devastated many, many communities, we would not have had long sustained protests without
being locked down. With all of that protest happening, all the education that was happening,
especially on social media, you couldn’t avoid the perspective. That allowed especially white cult
ure to finally put to use all that agony or despair that they were having about feeling hopeless
and helpless in this moment and gave them a direction, I guess, in which to run in order to be
able to better help these communities. So when they started touching base with housing and with
food insecurity and with poverty and mental health or the lack of health care in the country on a
really extreme level, because they finally had the time. They were able to investigate a little more
thoroughly, you know, not just Black issues, but Indigenous issues, Asian American issues. And
that’s what gave them this information that resource extraction is another form of genocide and
that genocide is still continuing in America today. So this was another way that they could show
up and help.
SC: What else can be done to raise awareness of and build solidarity with Native issues?
JS: It almost feels like people become paralyzed or they feel so guilty because maybe their
ancestors had something to do with genocide or maybe they currently are living on Native land.
Like, I lived on Duwamish territory, but now I live on Ojibwe territory out here in Minnesota. So
maybe they feel so guilty that they are currently existing on Native land that if they don’t say
anything at all, they won’t be at risk of losing what they have or they won’t have to reconcile what
their ancestors did. As much as we weren’t taught the true history of what they call the “Indian
Wars,” which were really cultural genocide and colonization, I think that still everybody knows
deep down inside that the Native Americans were murdered for land and resources. There’s no
way around that. So having to admit that on your own turf? I can’t get people to come to the table
to have these discussions and to own up to how we are still suffering in a genocidal way. That
has to be my biggest frustration and my own biggest heartbreak.
I do want to mention the residential school situation. Those stories broke before I came out here
in May. It is almost the middle of July, and the United States has not started their search. There
are over 300 schools in this country that held Native babies, children, teenagers, and on those
grounds, you’ll find dead bodies from all of the abuse, the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the
starvation, lack of resources because they refused to treat these children like human beings,
and that isn’t being discussed. We need to pay attention to these schools. It’s really concerning
in terms of how Native erasure occurs and how we are always swept under the rug. And if this
was a white community and hundreds of bodies had been found anywhere, there would have
been a full-on search. The Catholic Church would have been brought to a fucking trial at this
point, and they would have pushed that along very fast and very hard. I don’t know that we’ll
ever see an actual investigation because America would have to reconcile its hands in genocide
against Native Americans.
Today it’s the pipeline, but 120 years ago it was that they just wanted our land. So they were
taking these children away from their families in order to assimilate them to American culture,
to Christianity. So it may not feel like it had a lot to do with climate change, but in a roundabout
way it does.
And pipeline construction is continuing Native abductions. Two pipeline workers were found to
have young children, teenagers, and women in their capacity for sex trafficking. This is very
current and not talked about. Native women, teens, and children are the most trafficked
demographic in the United States percentage-wise. We saw a lot of it in North Dakota. Pipeline
workers come out of state to work these jobs. They get lonely, they can’t handle their sexual
impulses, and they get involved in trafficking of these women and children. And they go off the
map completely because these areas are so rural, because oftentimes law enforcement is in on
it. And they’re turning their heads or sometimes taking hush money in order to keep the
trafficking going. This has been an epidemic in Indigenous communities for decades, where you
can look up a list of Indigenous people that have gone missing over the course of the past 50
years. Very few of them have been found, and many are found horribly mangled. It doesn’t
necessarily always have to do with pipeline work, but within the past 10 to 15 years, pipeline
owners bring in people that are making a lot of money that feel like it’s OK to exploit these bodies
and will pay a trafficker whatever it will take.
SC: What can people do to help those of you protesting Line 3?
JS: There’s ways that people can support in an auxiliary way, less physical than showing up at
camp. As much as we would love to see the bodies. The actual physical support of showing up
at a camp gives us the opportunity to share what’s going on in Indigenous communities. But if
you can’t come in person, because this is the middle of America and nobody wants to be in
Minnesota in July, I understand. And donate whatever you can to the cause, because we are
traveling all over the state all the time. Donate to a bail fund, because at one point or another a
Brown body is going to be arrested who should not be in jail. And for anybody who can’t do
those, get the word out. Whoever is paying attention and who has those networking connections,
please, please get the word out to people that can do something. Make it known to those people
in those circles that there is a human rights crisis here in America, and it’s not just Black lives.
I’ll support Black lives till the day I die. But Native communities also need help. We need help. It’s really severe, and we are dying every day, and we can’t make the bleeding stop on our own.
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