On Indigenous Peoples Day–a day that is still used to celebrate one of the first colonizers who opened the door to genocide on our people–we are resolute against attempts to erase this ugly history, our heritage and our way of life by reclaiming the spaces where we will tell our stories.
by Winona LaDuke, published on Honor the Earth’s News page
Wild rice harvest, 2022. “Our history is our way of life; it’s Manoominike Giizis, or the Wild Rice Making Moon on White Earth, and the moon when the leaves change color. The manoomin is a constant for the Anishinaabe, returning each year in succession to the lakes and rivers we call home and fight to protect.”
History isn’t just what is read in books or what is taught in classrooms, history lives within the land and the people who reside upon it. We know, as the custodians of these sacred, natural shrines to our creators, one piece of land cannot simply be switched for another. The Loire River is dry for the first time in written history; The Colorado, Yantze, and Po are also facing shortages. It’s time to protect the water, it is time to protect our history.
Our history is our way of life; it’s Manoominike Giizis, or the Wild Rice Making Moon on White Earth, and the moon when the leaves change color. The manoomin is a constant for the Anishinaabe, returning each year in succession to the lakes and rivers we call home and fight to protect.
While some of these changes are the result of climate change, other threats to sacred sites come under the guise of solutions to the problem. Energy and mining interests are looking to create upheaval in our daily lives, so those living in a culture of convenience need not make any changes to theirs. We know that change is made by the hands of individuals, good intent and sometimes divine intervention. That is this moment.
Now is the time to protect biodiversity, resist the destruction of our world, and end the Indian Wars that have been waged on our peoples since Columbus first landed on our shores.
This year, the manoomin did not come in well at Big Sandy Flowage and Minnewawa Lakes, a rare thing. But Lower Lake on the White Earth reservation and many other lakes in our region were full of rice and their ancestral harvesters. And if a sustainable economy is what you are looking for, that’s the most sustainable economy possible - 10,000 years of harvesting from the same lakes. The Anishinaabe way of life is defined by wild rice and this land. That is why we are Water Protectors. Over half of our territory, Akiing, is made of water, and those lakes are our life and our food.
Across the north country we continue to defend our water from Enbridge, which has constructed six pipes already and is demanding new pipes in a bid to continue aging Line 5–which goes through Wisconsin and Michigan back to Canada. Meanwhile, they ignore their accountability for Line 3 which has seen three aquifer breaches and at least 28 frac outs.
Honor the Earth continues to push for accountability with this corporation, and now, we are beginning to see results with the decommissioning of the old Line 3. We see decommissioning as an excellent green jobs economy for the north as well.
Honor the Earth is keenly interested in pipes for people, not for Enbridge, as we note that over 5% of the water pipes in this country are deficient, and we lose half of our water before it ever reaches our homes.
We see a future of infrastructure for people, not for corporations. And we see that the way we protect the wild rice and all that we hold sacred is by protecting the water.
That’s also why we are working hard around the Big Sandy Lake Flowage to stop a new Rio Tinto Zinc mining project - because our water is worth more than their profits. Below the waters that have sustained our way of life for generations lies a wealth of minerals corporations would like to use to pave the way to their vision of a sustainable future, one we know to be a green washed lie.
The greed of this hungry mining giant has already destroyed ancestral Aboriginal caves in Australia, and Rio Tinto is also facing resistance from Apache Stronghold, as they attempt to replace a sacred plateau in Arizona with a vicious gouge in the Earth–all in exchange for copper. The cost of these “green” futures is our physical past and the lands that birthed and sustained us. Please join us in learning about corporate greenwashing and multinational mining corporations in the pristine north and elsewhere. And most importantly, help us resist.
What’s in a date? A timeline of tragedy and resistance.
Centuries have come and gone, but the disregard for the lives and wellbeing of Indigenous people remains the same. The Indian Wars are still being waged, though the weapons and justifications for displacing us are different. This is a story about when the Indian Wars are over. This is a story of making peace with the Earth and protecting the water.
September 4, 1862: Some 4,000 Dakota, who had survived starvation and brutality and the Dakota l862 resistance, fled to their western homelands. The U.S. military pursued them deep into the Dakotas where General John Pope pushed ahead, followed by Brigadier General Alfred Sully. There, 3,200 heavily armed soldiers surrounded a village of 300 tipis at Whitestone Hill, and they kept shooting; children, women, horses, dogs and anything that moved. The next morning the camp was empty of Indians except for the dead and a few lost children and women. Sully ordered all the Indian property abandoned in the camp to be burned. This included 300 tipis and 400,000 to 500,000 pounds of dried buffalo meat, the winter supplies of the Indians and the product of 1,000 butchered buffalo. The survivors fled to Cannonball on the Standing Rock Reservation.
September 4, 2016: Cannonball, Standing Rock Reservation Energy Transfer Partners private security forces unleash dogs on Lakota women and other water protectors in the stand off on the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL. This outrages thousands of people who then come to join Water Protectors at Standing Rock. This marks the beginning of $38 million in repression paid by North Dakota and Energy Transfer Partners to brutally repress water protectors.
September 4, 2022: Five thousand people come to Honor the Earth’s MN Water is Life Concert on the shore of Lake Superior, supporting water protectors and Indigenous peoples and listening to some amazing music - from the Indigo Girls to Dessa and more. We gathered for the water. Water protectors and our relatives to the east held their own Water is Life Festival in Michigan, hosting Indigenous artists from South America who also facilitated workshops and tribal panels on Manoomin (wild rice) cultivated in Michigan. This is our story, join us.
MN Water Is Life Festival, 2022
We see change and we will continue to fight for it .
It’s time to change the narrative and to take the truly green path. This year, Honor the Earth with our sister organization (and your help), were able to purchase almost 800 acres of land - including Enbridge holdings adjacent to the White Earth reservation. We also witnessed a huge victory after extensive litigation and months of depositions. We filed a civil complaint on July 16, 2021, arguing that the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office’s blockade on June 28, 2021 to the 80-acre Giniw camp was a violation of our private property rights, including, in particular, an easement covering the driveway to the property. The Ninth District Court judge ruled that an easement between Hubbard County and Indigenous environmentalists is a road, not a non-vehicular trail.
