Indigenous Michiganders Led the Charge in Shutting Down Line 5

KATELYN KIVEL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
DECEMBER 4, 2020 1:28 PM EST

The shutdown of Enbridge’s Line 5 marks a major moment in relations between the State of Michigan and the native Anishinaabe people.

BAY MILLS, Mich.—The Anishinaabe, known also as Chippewa or Ojibwe, are an Indigenous group living in Michigan and Ontario.

For hundreds of years, Anishinaabe people have lived around Whitefish Bay in the Upper Peninsula, becoming established as the Bay Mills Indian Community (BMIC) in 1860 by an act of Congress. Without their lands, taken from them by the government of the United States, there would be no Michigan.

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For years, the BMIC has fought against the oil company Enbridge and the controversial Line 5 pipeline. Line 5 ran through the heart of Anishinaabe territory, ceded to the United States in 1836 paving the way for Michigan’s statehood in 1837, BMIC explained in a 2018 letter. That treaty granted the now-Bay Mills people the ability to, among other things, fish their waters in perpetuity. They argued that given Enbridge’s responsibility for the oil spill in the Kalamazoo river in 2010, Line 5 risked Michigan’s ability to hold up its end of the bargain.

As he was approving the Line 5 project, then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, ignored the 1836 treaty and consulted none of Michigan’s federally recognized Indigenous populations.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, on the other hand, recognized those treaties.