STOP THE PIPELINES

Photo by Lucas Nerbonne

Raise Your Voice to Stop Line 3 Pipeline

On Friday, November 13, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency permitted construction of the Line 3 pipeline to begin immediately. The Department of Commerce passed on their legal options without comment.

Starting December 1, thousands of health professionals, legislators, lawyers, and people of faith contacted Governor Tim Walz. They asked him to stay construction of the Enbridge Line 3 Oil Pipeline while multiple legal appeals are heard in the courts.

Rather than take action to protect Minnesota’s waterways, respect Native treaty rights, and keep wealth in communities and working class jobs, the Walz administration chose to stay silent.

We will not give up! We will continue to draw courageously from our multiple spiritual traditions to resist, renew, and build community as we create a world where everyone can thrive.

Please continue to take action with us, and stay tuned for details.

News Alerts

Spiritual and Religious Leaders Protest Line 3 Construction in Palisade (Lakeland News, 12/17/20)

Enbridge will officially start construction of the Line 3 pipeline on Tuesday, Dec. 8 (MinnPost, 12/1/20)

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency advisers quit over pipeline permit (Star Tribune, 11/18/20)

Events

View highlights of #solsticewater offerings of prayer, reflection, and spiritual practice.

MNIPL Line 3 Videos

Go to our Line 3 playlists on YouTube and Facebook.

Frontline Indigenous Groups

We know Water Protectors will be on the frontlines to defend the land, the climate, the water, and the wild rice. Follow our partners on social media for updates, and rush a donation to the frontlines or the court case as the fight continues!

What is Being Done to #StopLine3

The movement to Stop Line 3 is a living ecosystem of advocacy, direct action, and education. Think of it like a three-legged stool that involves systemic change, practical change, and spiritual/relational change. We need all three to stop this pipeline! Below is an ever-evolving toolkit of ways you can support the current moment!

Advocacy

Stay Against Construction

Watch the Line MN is a grassroots effort to monitor construction activities on the proposed route in order to provide court evidence of Enbridge’s activities. They’re looking for volunteers to help monitor the pipeline route and report on construction activities. This information could support legal appeals, regulatory complaints, or other ways of delaying or even stopping construction.

As a volunteer, you would adopt a section of the pipeline route to scout regularly, then submit reports and photos of that section. If you live near the route, this could be a great way for you to help the movement! You don’t have to be an expert, only a diligent notetaker. All Watch the Line MN activities will be within the law, and you will never be asked to go beyond public land.

Legal Appeals

On August 19, 2020, a number of opponents to the project filed legal appeals to stop the pipeline, including multiple Native Nations. These appeals could be a pathway to halting or delaying the project. These appeals will play out in Spring of 2021.

Direct Action

Host a Mindful Direct Action Training

MNIPL has developed a set of trainings in partnership with the Boundless Love Project for people in spiritual communities to learn about mindfulness and direct action grounded in their spiritual traditions. Contact [email protected] if you are interested.

Support/Follow Frontline Resistance Groups

Giniw Collective is a grassroots, frontline effort led by indigenous women to protect the sacred and empower the next generation of leadership with traditional values.

RISE (Resilient Indigenous Sisters Engaging with our Allies) stands in solidarity to protect the land, water, fire, and air for the next seven generations.

Honor the Earth is a Native-led organization led by Winona LaDuke, welcoming water protectors to the Northland and building a green economy while resisting destruction of Mother Earth.

Education

Host a Film Showing

Host a watch party of Honor the Earth’s film, LN3: Seven Teachings of the Anishinaabe in Resistance. This 38-minute documentary is a great way to introduce your community to the pipeline. MNIPL will help equip you with tools to facilitate a dialogue that leads people to action.

Have MNIPL Talk to Your Community about Line 3

One of the most important ways we can work to stop Line 3 is by talking about it. We have practical tools you can use to educate your faith community about Line 3 and can help coach you to bring up this divisive topic in a way that leads to change and deeper relationships. Contact [email protected].

Join the Line 3 Interfaith Response Team

This MNIPL team meets weekly on Monday nights to strategize and build community around a spiritual and moral response to the Line 3 pipeline. We share from our particular traditions, educate across spiritual communities, plan direct actions, and build a love-filled movement for a world without extreme extraction and settler colonialism.

Line 3 Blog Posts

#solsticewater offerings

Dec 22, 2020

Water Protectors arrested; MNIPL staff in group

Dec 7, 2020

Add your name: Spiritual leaders opposing police brutality

Jul 20, 2020

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Faith Leaders Read the Names of 227 Bodies of Water that Line 3 Will Cross

Feb 20, 2020

Faith Leader Letter: Polymet Mine Proposal

Feb 11, 2020

Information & Stories from the Movement

HOPEFUL RESISTANCE

Hopeful resistance has been abundant throughout the long 7-year public process. The stories below are just some of the ways this movement has brought healing, hope, and community to our region. Despite the deplorable inactions by state officials, our hope-filled and direct resistance will continue!

Giniw Collective and allies have pushed forward direct action along the pipeline route, at Enbridge offices, and at the biggest banks in the world, pushing to stop the tar sands once and for all.

Youth have taken to the streets and to the banks to Stop Line 3.

Ordinary citizens have been speaking up in public hearings for years, even through a global pandemic.

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples movement has brought international attention to the disproportionate violence and injustice perpetrated against Indigenous women, which is linked to large construction activities like Line 3.

A group of 13 young people (under 25) are legally intervening as a party in the case to stop Line 3, representing themselves in a room full of lawyers.

On Sept. 28, 2020, MN350 and 1,200 people from all corners of Minnesota, as well as many neighboring states, came together in Duluth for the Gichi-gami Gathering to Stop Line 3

More than 400 religious and spiritual leaders signed a letter calling on government leaders to rein in law enforcement responses to the inevitable protests against Enbridge Line 3. (August 2020)

Winona LaDuke and Bill McKibben sat down in April 2020 for a discussion about Line 3 in light of the collapse of the oil industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A group of Indigenous youth fighting Line 3 went on a 250-mile canoe journey to stand for the water. (July 2018)

At the Public Utilities Commission meeting in June 2018, 550 faith leaders said no to Line 3. They then gathered at the Headwaters of the Mississippi for an interfaith prayer gathering to Protect Sacred Water. In February 2020, many returned to the Minnesota Capitol to pray for that same water in the Governor’s Office.

WHO IS IN THE FIGHT

Official parties in the legal process to Stop Line 3 include:

Other organizations to follow in the movement:

WHAT IS LINE 3

The Line 3 Expansion is a massive new tar sands oil pipeline being proposed through the heart of Northern Minnesota. If built, the pipeline would move 760,000 barrels per day of oil (bpd), an amount similar to Keystone XL (830,000 bpd) and the Dakota Access Pipeline (570,000 bpd). Line 3 would cross over a hundred waterways in Minnesota alone, including the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It would also pass extremely close to the border of multiple Native nations and across hundreds of miles of treaty-protected land: land that those communities depend on for drinking water and wild rice gathering.

The company developing Line 3, Enbridge, is a Canadian company that owns a large share of the Dakota Access pipeline and is responsible for two of the largest inland oil spills in US history: 1991 in Grand Rapids, MN and 2010 in Kalamazoo, MI. Enbridge refers to this project as the “Line 3 Replacement,” intending for it to replace an existing, aging pipeline also called Line 3. However, this is no mere replacement: the new Line 3 would have more than double the capacity and follow a largely different route.

For more detailed pipeline project information, click here.

Permit Process

In order to build the pipeline, Enbridge needed a number of permits and the approval of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). In June 2018, the PUC unanimously approved the pipeline project, ignoring the legal arguments concerning treaty rights and climate change, and going against the concerns of 68,000 public comments (fully 94% of the public comments). More than a year after this approval, on November 30, 2020, the State of Minnesota granted the final permits for construction of the Line 3 pipeline. But the fight is far from over.

STOP THE PIPELINES