Winona LaDuke: President Biden Has Betrayed Native Americans

By David Marchese, The New York Times

11 August 21

ight now in northern Minnesota, the Canadian oil-and-gas-transport company Enbridge is building an expansion of a pipeline, Line 3, to carry oil through fragile parts of the state�s watersheds as well as treaty-protected tribal lands. Winona LaDuke, a member of the local Ojibwe tribe and a longtime Native rights activist, has been helping to lead protests and acts of civil disobedience against the controversial $9.3 billion project. �I spend a lot of time,� she says, �fighting stupid ideas that are messing with our land and our people.� So far the efforts of LaDuke, who is 61 and who ran alongside Ralph Nader as the Green Party�s vice-presidential nominee in 1996 and 2000, have been in vain. The Biden administration declined to withdraw federal permits for the project, a stance that Line 3 opponents see as hypocritical given the president�s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline as well as his vocal support for climate action. �I have had the highest hopes for the Biden administration,� LaDuke says, �only to have them crushed.� Not long after we spoke, LaDuke was arrested and jailed for violating the conditions of her release on earlier protest-related charges, which required her to avoid Enbridge�s worksites. She has since been released.

How do you understand Biden�s decision to allow the construction of Line 3? He�s hellbent on destroying Ojibwe people with this pipeline. Why do we get the last tar-sands pipeline, Joe? It�s kind of like when John Kerry went and testified to Congress against the Vietnam War and said, Who�s going to tell that soldier that he�s the last one to die for a bad war? Who�s going to tell those Ojibwes that they�re the last ones to be destroyed for a bad tar-sands pipeline? What�s right about this? I organized people to vote for Biden. I drove people to the polls through seas of Trump signs. I drove Indian people to vote who hadn�t voted in 20 years. And what did we get from Joe? A pipeline shoved down our throats.

Are you saying that you think Biden has some specific animosity toward the Ojibwe? No. He doesn�t have animosity, but he�s privileging a Canadian multinational. He knows that this pipeline runs right through our reservations. They know, and have a choice of what they�re going to support. I think it�s a trade-off for him: I canceled Keystone, and so we�ll just let this one go through, because it�s a replacement pipe. It�s not. It�s a new pipe. It�s horrendous. It�s a violation of not only the treaties but also every ounce of common sense. It�s a drought right now. But Enbridge put in an amendment: They get five billion gallons of water out of a region where rivers are 75 percent below normal. What�s with that? There was not a federal environmental impact statement on this pipeline, and the Biden administration just said we don�t need to do one. I mean, why?

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