The time thieves
This month, nearly 300 Line 3 protesters will have court dates in Hubbard County alone.
Written By: Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth | 9:00 am, Jan. 14, 2022
Activists are escorted out of an Enbridge Line 3 pump station after being arrested near Park Rapids, Minn., on June 7, 2021. Photo: Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio/AP
Come Jan. 16, some 140 people are going to be arraigned in Hubbard County for the crime basically of being a water protector.
Most of these individuals are charged with misdemeanor trespass charges, but a few are even charged with theft. In this case, stealing time from Enbridge.
Time thieves. That’s a felony theft charge.
Water protectors face over $3 million in fines, about the same as the state fine to Enbridge for busting a hole in an aquifer and destroying groundwater.
This month, nearly 300 defendants will have court dates in Hubbard County alone, where officials used “pain compliance” torture methods against peaceful demonstrators, some of whom now face permanent disabilities – and up to 11 years in prison.
If this is not a world gone mad, we don’t want to see it.
One district court judge is considering a legal brief he requested on dismissing charges “in the interest of justice.” Let’s hope judicial reasoning prevails.
But who is the real criminal here?
Enbridge is committing a crime of the century, the theft of water from Akiing, this land and water, and the destruction of water. The one-year anniversary of Enbridge's breach of the aquifer in Clearwater County is coming in late January.
After reportedly millions spent trying to stop the leak, it’s still gushing anywhere from 100,000 to 1.2 million gallons or more of artesian water daily in the Mississippi headwaters watershed! There is no word yet about any subsequent prosecution or how a $3.3 million fine was set and how it’s being enforced.
The good water is still pouring out after Enbridge violated the construction permit and drilled the bedrock 10-feet below their approved plan.
This same company burned 28 rivers and nearby wetlands with fracking fluids and secured the single largest allocation of water in the history of the state, 5 billion gallons, during the deepest drought we have seen in our lifetimes. Really appalling, as is the company backing its water trucks up to the Park Rapids city well and depleting more water so it could drill under the Shell River.
2021 was a hell of a year alright! Enbridge, the foreign multinational, occupied and ransacked northern Minnesota to put in a tar sands pipeline at the end of the fossil fuel era.
It imported 4,300 workers, (over two thirds from out of state) and occupied the north in six heavily militarized construction spreads, forcing water protectors to the front lines. There they stood peacefully. They sang, prayed, and played piano (seven people and a piano were arrested in Hubbard County last winter).
We faced police, brutal temperatures and increasingly violent arrests. In the siege of a militarized north during a pandemic, government officials bowed to a Canadian corporation and Line 3 was completed this fall. As we watch the catastrophe of climate change unfold, no one gets a tiara for this pipeline.
In the meantime, most other pipeline projects have been canceled as investors flee the dirty oil of Alberta, Canada, and the destructive nature of pipelines becomes more apparent: the Jordan Cove pipeline, Keystone, and the Constitution Pipeline did not get built. Two of those pipelines were Canadian – that’s what the country exports these days, dirty oil pipelines. But it’s finally the end of the party for tar sands pipelines, even as Enbridge seems to have the last hurrah here.
Enbridge has left Minnesota in a legal and moral quagmire and deepened divisions across the area. Although it is required by law to have a decommissioning plan, prior to installing the pipeline, it seems it has none.
Sadly, Hubbard County exemplifies what we often call the Deep North. On any given day in December, 38% of the people in jail in Hubbard County were Native; Native people comprise around 2% of the population. That’s a stat only the Deep North could produce, as my haters numbers shoot up substantially.
Like fellow water protectors, I must wonder why we\re facing criminal charges for protecting the water, and a foreign corporation which is poisoning our water is not considered an eco-terrorist, and a time thief, taking time and natural resources from our future generations.
But more than that, the company should face the deep criminal charge of ecocide – the destruction of ecosystems.
Meanwhile, back in Park Rapids, Enbridge has sold its office and moved back to Alberta to count profits. I’m going to stick around and keep calling Minnesota and Hubbard County to task for selling out water, treaties, and the civil rights of water protectors to a foreign interest.
It’s time, though, to prosecute the real criminals.
Related Articles:
PROSECUTORS HIT ANTI-PIPELINE PROTESTERS WITH FELONY CHARGES TO SEND A MESSAGE, DEFENSE SAYS: One county prosecutor asked oil company Enbridge for reimbursement to help with some of the prosecutions clogging up rural courts.
Prosecutor Sought Funding From Oil Giant Enbridge to Jail Line 3 Water Protectors: Report - "First the police, now the prosecutors—who's next to violate constitutional rights of water protectors and ask Big Oil to pay for it?"
The felony theft charges, which have been levied in several counties, are prosecutorial overkill, said Joshua Preston, an attorney representing at least 35 defendants. "They are intended to have a chilling effect - to discourage people from engaging in protest."
