Seventeen-year-old Rose Whipple is from the Santee Dakota and Ho-Chunk nations, and serves as the Twin Cities Organizer for Honor The Earth. She’s working tirelessly to protect her homeland from Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Here’s why.
How would the Line 3 pipeline impact your community?
The Line 3 pipeline would directly impact my community because it is going through the heart of Anishinaabe and Dakota territory here in Minnesota. This pipeline would be the biggest pipeline North America has ever seen. It would go right through the Wild Rice beds, which is a very sacred food to the Indigenous people here, and we have been harvesting it for thousands of years. Once that oil leaks into the soil of those Wild Rice beds, that Wild Rice can no longer grow.
Minnesota is one of the only places in the world that can naturally grow Wild Rice, and it is getting closer and closer to being completely desecrated — all because of big companies like Enbridge. This pipeline would also be going through several treaty territories here in Minnesota, where the Anishinaabe were given the right to fish, hunt, gather, and harvest Wild Rice. But if the trees are cut down, animals’ homes are destroyed, and water is poisoned. There won’t be any more fish or animals to hunt because they will all be gone.
Minnesota is home to over 10,000 lakes, the Mississippi River, and the biggest freshwater lake in the world –– Lake Superior. The Line 3 pipeline would be going directly through it, affecting 1/3 of the world’s fresh water.
Humans can not survive without water. And by poisoning 1/3 of the world’s fresh water, Enbridge is perpetrating genocide. It is incredibly important that people stand up, raise their voice, and fight back against the Line 3 pipeline because so much is at stake! No matter where you live, it will be affecting you and the next seven generations. The risks are too high. We need to stand up, raise our voices, and fight back against Enbridge and their proposed Line 3 pipeline from desecrating our land, water, and communities.
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