Ojibwe prophecies speak of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It is our choice as communities and as individuals how we will proceed.
A key part of the struggle to protect our Mother Earth, and renew our covenant with both the Creator and the generations to come, must be to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This means we must say no to tar sands oil, and no to fracking and dirty coal.
We’ve already raised the average temperature of the globe roughly 1°C since we started our economies based on fossil energy. The question is whether we can stop it from rising much more: this is at the core of our survival. It is essential for us to look at the world’s economic and environmental realities in order to make critical decisions about our future. That means we must address issues such as climate change, peak oil, and food insecurity. This new millennium is a time when we are facing the joint challenges of an industrial food system and a centralized energy system, both of which are based on fossil fuels and are damaging the health of our peoples and the earth at an alarming rate. In the US—the largest and most inefficient energy economy in the world—tribal communities have long supplied the raw materials for nuclear and coal plants, huge dam projects, and oil and gas development. These resources have been exploited to power far-off cities and towns, while Indigenous peoples and people of colour live in the energy sacrifice zones.
All of this already has a big long-term price tag. For example, in 2011, fourteen weather-related disasters in the US (from Joplin’s tornado to Grand Forks’s flooding to New England’s storms) are estimated to have cost the country around $14 billion, according to a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, and these numbers were dwarfed by Hurricane Sandy the following year. These costs, and the frequency and severity of disasters, have increased every year since then. Disasters related to climate change cause immeasurable losses, such as the poisoning of the Athabasca River in the tar sands extraction zone, and present premature deaths and hospitalizations caused by climate change-related health issues, such as extreme heat and flooding. Climate change is expensive and deadly.
Tar Sands Pipelines
The expansion of the tar sands industry is rapidly destroying one of the largest and most pristine river systems on the continent, the Athabasca River Basin, as well as a huge carbon sink in the boreal forest. It is an understatement to say that environmental regulations in Alberta are very lax. This beautiful-land-turned-petro-chemical-state is governed by a virtual dictatorship that has been unresponsive to national and international outcry at the grave human rights violations being carried out at the behest of some of the largest, richest, and most powerful oil companies in the world. But First Nations voices are stronger, and we support our friends and relatives in their call for healing.
Tar sands production is licensed to use more water than Calgary and Edmonton combined, which are together home to almost two million people. Worse, tar sands wastewater is so laced with chemical sludge it is turned into poison. All of this is happening in a world that is increasingly water challenged. Every day, tar sands producers burn six hundred million cubic feet of natural gas to produce tar sands oil—enough natural gas to heat three million homes—and carbon emissions for the project surpass those of ninety-seven nations in the world combined. Accelerating this through seeking new markets for tar sands would only worsen the situation.
Some of the most important battles today are around the tar sands. Since the construction of new pipelines and the expansion of existing ones are central to the expansion of this destructive and wasteful industry, they are also key fronts of struggle—and I see this struggle to protect our lands uniting Native communities in the States with First Nations communities in the North in new ways. Idle No More in Canada was a catalyst for spreading that consciousness as well.
Clearly, the struggle to protect our lands is intensifying at both ends of the pipeline. Tar sands oil is sixteen times more likely to breach a pipeline than regular crude oil. Consider our landscape in Minnesota, which is full of lakes, rivers, and wetlands. Wetlands are like sponges—they soak up everything. In Minnesota alone, nearly one and a half million gallons of oil have spilled out of the Enbridge/Lakehead pipelines over the past thirty years.
In the northern US, our land and water are the lifeblood of the Anishinaabeg people, sustaining and nourishing us. A large share of the world’s fresh surface water supply lies here, and it is worth protecting. Further, our sacred wild rice beds, lakes, and rivers are precious, and our regional fisheries generate $7.2 billion annually and support forty-nine thousand jobs. Our White Earth tribal chairman said, “When we signed those treaties, and secured protection for our wild rice, we weren’t talking about getting some rice in a bag…. We meant a lake. We have a right to the land, water, and air that our food came from—and that needs to be protected by sovereign nations.”
Our land and water are being threatened by Enbridge pipelines transporting ever-larger amounts of tar sands oil (and also toxic lighter “diluents”) across Minnesota, and by permits sought by Calumet Refinery to ship oil on Lake Superior. Enbridge is responsible for the largest on-land spill in US history, and six Enbridge pipelines currently cross the territories of the Leech Lake and Fond du Lac Bands of Ojibwe. The Alberta Clipper pipeline was built through our land in 2009, over the opposition of many concerned people. At the same time, Enbridge built another pipeline—a “diluent” pipeline that transports toxic lighter hydrocarbons back into Canada. The two pipelines form a loop: the Clipper moves heavy Alberta tar sands diluted bitumen mixed with diluents southward to Chicago, while the diluent line returns the proprietary diluents northward for reuse. Enbridge’s four older pipelines in the area have no easement across, yet they trespass on Red Lake–ceded land. The Leech Lake Ojibwe have suffered through one major spill already.
The Certificate of Need—Or Is It Greed?
Nearly two million barrels of oil already flow through and across Minnesota daily, but even this is not enough for Enbridge. It is now pushing to increase the amount of Alberta tar sands diluted bitumen in its Alberta Clipper pipeline. This pipeline—also known as Line 67—would be expanded from 440,000 barrels per day to a maximum of 880,000 barrels per day through hundreds of miles of Minnesota, and through the Red Lake, Leech Lake, and Fond du Lac reservations. To increase the amount of Alberta tar sands diluted bitumen through Minnesota would bring unacceptable risks of more oil spills.
Enbridge is also proposing a “Sandpiper” pipeline more than six hundred miles long in this region. The pipeline would run from Beaver Lodge Station, just south of Tioga, North Dakota, to Superior, Wisconsin. This project threatens our home community of White Earth. The proposed Sandpiper southern route would follow the Minnesota pipelines from Clearbrook to Park Rapids, running south of the Fond du Lac Reservation and invading several established tribal areas that provide tribal members hunting and gathering rights from the 1854 Treaty. Enbridge refers to “a minimum of 24-inch diameter”1 pipeline in its proposal, but a 36-inch or larger pipeline could also be built instead to pump fuel from the development boom of the Bakken Oil play in North Dakota. This proposal is currently in the works, and Enbridge is promoting it across Minnesota. It would carry an estimated 375,000 barrels a day from Clearbrook, Minnesota, to Superior, Wisconsin.
Next to the Sandpiper, the second-biggest potential tar sands pipeline in the US is the Keystone XL expansion proposed by TransCanada Corporation, which would entail a twelve-hundred-mile-long pipeline ending in Steele City, Nebraska. This project is yet another sham, a money-making scheme for oil and pipeline companies, not the “‘Good Fairy” for the American economy that the company’s public relations team describes.
To think that anyone would consider approving such pointless projects pains me deeply, as I raise my family on the land the Sandpiper pipeline would cross, but it also pains me as an economist—which is to say that it makes no sense in terms of creating jobs, either. The reality is that the present $100 billion or so in US investments in the Canadian tar sands represents a waste of money for long-term US security. Keystone is just 7 per cent of that stupidity, but it opens a pipeline to an exponential expansion in waste. As the industry tries to deflect attention about the real impacts, costs, and risks of pipelines, companies are aggressively promoting them, using many exaggerations. The hype around Keystone XL has been particularly intense, so it is important to directly confront the claims from proponents. Across the board, the song and dance of the big corporations seeking to build more pipelines does not jive with the realities.
One of the biggest promises made by proponents of Keystone XL is that it will bring jobs and energy security, but the truth is that it will do neither. Even if the pipeline never spilled, even if the tar sands were not an environmental atrocity, this would still be a bad deal for the American public. Defenders of the project claim that Keystone XL will create 20,000 jobs for American workers, and as many as 120,000 “direct, indirect and induced”2 jobs. Both are gross exaggerations that include overestimates of construction jobs and an outdated plan, which includes parts of the pipeline that have already been built. The Cornell Global Labor Institute published an assessment of the Keystone XL project that stands in stark contrast to the picture painted by oil companies and those in receipt of lobbying dollars in Washington. This report, which used TransCanada’s own data, concluded that just 2,500 to 4,650 jobs will be created, most of them temporary and non-local. So much for putting America back to work.3
Further, even if all the Keystone fantasies were true, seasonally adjusted unemployment numbers would not budge from the current level of 9.1 per cent. American unemployment, it turns out, is a bit more complex than one pipeline dream. America’s economic woes may have more to do with a trillion-dollar war, a trade deficit to China, and some serious systemic inefficiencies and inequalities, rather than one pipeline.
Another misleading promise sold to Americans is that Keystone XL will keep domestic gas prices down, though it has been estimated that it actually would result in an increase in gas prices of twenty to thirty cents per gallon. The existing Keystone pipeline delivers gas to refineries in the Midwest, and the Keystone XL expansion would route petroleum to the Gulf of Mexico, where it would be sold internationally at a higher price. This will hurt not only consumers, but also businesses, which will likely cut workers to cover (inelastic) costs.
This also relates to the false promise that Keystone XL will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Keystone XL is intended to be an export pipeline, with contracts for export all signed, sealed, and delivered before it reaches the refineries in Port Arthur, Texas. For instance, research group OilChange reports that the Valero Energy Corporation, which has contracts for at least one hundred thousand barrels daily from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, has a “publically [sic] disclosed business model [that] is focused on exporting crude oil.”4 The Valero Port Arthur Refinery in Texas is located in a foreign trade zone, where it joins corporate neighbours Motiva (a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and the Saudi government) and TOTAL of France in the complex of Gulf Coast refineries. Indeed, testimony at Canadian hearings had oil companies arguing that there is a present and pending glut in the US oil market, which requires the tar sands producers to ship outside the continent.
In short, the Keystone XL pipeline means a few jobs, higher gas prices, and a pretty good chance of contaminating the Ogallala aquifer—the big one in Nebraska (the risks to which may have stopped the project in the short term, at least).
Making a New Path
While the vast advertising and lobbying dollars of the big oil and pipeline companies have tried to present the expansion of tar sands pipelines as the Good Fairy for the American economy, activists have shown these promises to be a sham.
The battle against the Keystone XL pipeline has already shown the power of grassroots activism. There has been a huge groundswell of public resistance within North America, with the effect of delaying approval from the US secretary of state and President Obama. Resistance towards projects like Keystone XL will continue on multiple fronts. Much of my involvement in seeking these alternatives to tar sands is through my role as executive director of Honor the Earth, in which I work nationally and internationally on the issues of climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice with Indigenous communities.
Spiritual horse rides to protect Mother Earth and the communities of the Plains and Great Lakes along the proposed KXL and Sandpiper/Alberta Clipper pipeline routes, 2013. The rides coincided with community meetings and nonviolent direct action trainings in stops along the route. Rides were organized by Honor the Earth, the Horse Spirit Society, Owe Aku International, and Moccasins on the Ground organizers.
In 2014, two of Honor the Earth’s core priorities are to oppose the expansion of tar sands and fracking imports (in particular the Enbridge pipelines in Minnesota), and to support the Lakota nation in its opposition to the KXL pipeline (which crosses their territory). This work is done both through campaigns and through the re-granting of funds to Native-led initiatives. There is very little funding available for Native-led work on these issues, and we need to take initiative to address the reality that only 0.07 per cent of all foundation funding in the United States goes towards Native non-profits, and only a very small fraction of that goes towards initiatives that are actually led by Native peoples. We need to create the economic solutions for our own communities in ways that are aligned with our various cultural traditions, and we also need to organize our own people to protect our communities.
One of our previous responses to tar sands pipelines was the Ride for Mother Earth along the pipeline route of the Line 67 expansion. In September and October of 2013, my sister, friends, and I rode our horses along the Enbridge pipeline route in Minnesota, where it passes through our 1855 treaty area as it crosses near our precious lakes, rivers, wetlands, and towns—which are already burdened by high rates of cancer related to pesticides and oil. We did this in prayer, with our community leaders, to raise awareness of the devastation caused by the tar sands in Canada and fracking in North Dakota, and to protect our communities from the proposed Alberta Clipper expansion and the Enbridge Sandpiper pipelines.
We also rode to support our relatives of the Lakota nation in its opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which crosses their territory. Part of our journey was talking to people along the way, who need to have their voices heard. Another part was a spiritual ride, to send that power back. We also wanted to have an educational moment to inform landowners and towns, as well as our tribal nations, about the possible impacts and risks of these pipelines.
At the same time, our brothers and sisters of the Lakota Nation rode their horses from the Rosebud to the Cheyenne River, across land in Lakota territory that is still untarnished by a pipeline, in order to oppose the flow of dirty tar sands oil. This land is part of a vast prairie region that was once full of 250 species of grass and fifty million buffalo.
Our efforts have also involved a media campaign and public education efforts, including the rental of two billboards and a speaking tour, along with grassroots organizing and advocacy. We are collaborating with Indigenous Environmental Network, WaterLegacy, and Minnesota 350 to build a stronger campaign against the Alberta Clipper project.
Honor the Earth has also been involved in bringing community concerns about the Alberta Clipper project to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC). Enbridge is asking for a “certificate of need” from the MPUC to double the capacity of the present Alberta Clipper pipeline carrying tar sands diluted bitumen to the Superior refinery. The MPUC approved the first of two expansions to the Alberta Clipper in July of 2013. The second and larger expansion of up to 880,000 barrels a day has now been sidetracked into a “Contested Case Hearing” due to local citizen outcry and written comments contesting facts presented by Enbridge during their application to the MPUC. There will be public hearings during the second expansion, and an open written comment period in winter; we have been encouraging public participation.
Enbridge’s Sandpiper is another project that will have to be opposed in coming years. Based on evidence of a history of spills and a lack of effective cleanup, I, along with many community members on White Earth, believe that this project should not be approved. Enbridge has failed to address the public’s growing concerns over their pipelines’ impacts on our lands.
There is no need for pipelines to be built or expanded. There is a need for safety, planning, and infrastructure for efficiency—not profit. This land, its people, and the animals that still inhabit it do not need pipelines. And the people who live in the North, in the Athabascan River Basin, do not want to see more mining done that is ravaging their land.
So, What Is the Solution?
This is the happy part. It turns out that our ancestors and my father had it right. My father used to say to me, “Winona, I don’t want to hear your philosophy, if you can’t grow corn.” Now that’s an interesting thing to say to your child. Well, I thought about it, and thought about it some more. And then, I decided to grow corn. Along the way, I became an economist who wanted to look at the systems that support sovereignty and self-determination, namely our economic system.
As tar sands projects bring localized impacts to many places, it is undeniable that climate change is happening, and that if we do not take action there will be serious financial, ecological, and cultural consequences—and Indigenous peoples will experience the disproportionate burden.
There are some basic choices ahead:
1) Do nothing, and allow governments and businesses to make market-based decisions at a pace that does not mirror the urgency of the problem;
2) Get involved in mitigation, or reduction of carbon, as communities and nations; and/or
3) Adapt for climate change and ultimately a climate-challenged world.
The second and third options provide real opportunities to make a better future. Jimisawaabandaaming, or how we envision our future, is a worldview of positive thinking. It’s an Anishinaabe worldview, coming from a place and a cultural way of life that has been here, on the same land, for ten thousand years. To transform modern society into one based on survival, not conquest, we need to make some big changes. We need to actualize an economic and social transformation. Restoring an economics that makes sense for upcoming generations needs to be a priority. In our community, we think of this as economics for the seventh generation.
In our teachings, we have some clear direction: our intention is Minobimaatisiiwin, a spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional happiness—sort of an Anishinaabe version of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index. Within our cultural teachings lie these Indigenous Economic Principles: intergenerational thinking and equity (thinking for the seventh generation); inter- and intra-species equity (respect); and valuing those spiritual and intangible facets of the natural world and cultural practice (not all values and things can be monetized).
Consider what may be one of the largest follies in economic thinking from fossil fuel supporters: the opportunity forgone costs. What this means is that we waste $200 billion or so on tar sands oil and infrastructure, and do not create weatherized and energy-efficient houses, a smart grid, energy-efficient vehicles, a relocalized food system, and renewable energy. And, ten years from now, we will in fact be in worse economic shape.
Frankly, if we put that much money into weatherization, efficiency, relocalizing power production, and an energy-efficient grid powered by new renewables, as well as localized food and energy-efficient mass transportation systems, we would build a stronger economy and we would have a shot at lasting much longer than another fifty years. Money spent on efficiency and relocalizing food systems means that we do not need dirty oil. In the meantime, the average meal today travels fifteen hundred miles from farmer to table, and the transportation system on this continent is incredibly inefficient. Oil and auto companies continue to lobby against regulations on efficiency.
Renewable energy means that you pay for the infrastructure now, but can project the price of fuel into the future—given that the wind and sun are still free. Efficiency is the key to economic stability—consider, for instance, how we lose 57 per cent of our power between point of origin and point of consumption.
Now, all of that means money is being made by higher levels of consumption in an inefficient system. These inefficiencies and new pipelines are clearly in the interest of Suncor, ExxonMobil, TransCanada, Enbridge, and the like—but not the general public. In the end, there is a lot of destruction for corporate profits, something that those Occupying Wall Street have been saying pretty loudly and clearly. Tar sands oil is not intended to serve the long-term interests of us on this continent. As such, it will not only dirty our land, rivers, aquifers, and consciences, but it will waste billions of dollars that could be invested in mass transportation systems, localized food and energy, and efficiency, thereby eliminating the need for dirty oil. Rebooting America and Native America’s infrastructure and employment opportunities would put tens of thousands of people to work in a renewable energy economy—which, it turns out, has a key economic stabilizer. That economics is durable, and will provide not only for 99 per cent of us, but also for our future generations.
Recovering and restoring local food and energy production requires a conscious transformation and set of technological and economic leaps for our communities. We need to restore our relationship to place, and we need to determine what an economy that is Indigenous looks like. Our focus has been on the traditional economy, which involves extensive subsistence agriculture and falls outside the definition of market economies.
The economy of the future is the green economy. The rising price of fossil fuels will create a mandate for efficiency, and the challenge of addressing climate change will require a reduction in carbon emissions from power generation, transportation, and agricultural sources. In Honor’s work, we re-grant funds to Native-led initiatives across the continent. I can say that as Native peoples, we’re leading in building some sense of economic stability for the future, while we get some control over our health, food, and energy systems—these are all interrelated.
We have a lot of work to do; Thomas Berry calls it the “great work.”5 We need to work and to clean up the toxic waste caused by the companies opposing us. No longer do we want to live in the shadow of their lethal pollution and without our own sources of heat or electricity. It is time for our communities to recognize the links between corporate profit and the earth’s destruction.
When we destroy the earth, we destroy ourselves. So we must create sustainable energy and food economies for this millennium and for the generations yet to come. In my community on the White Earth reservation, we are choosing the green path. That is the work of restoring Indigenous ways of living and land-based economics for the seventh generation. What will your community choose?