Enbridge Line 5 is a 645-mile oil pipeline that carries crude oil and natural gas liquids from Superior, Wisconsin, across northern Wisconsin, under the Straits of Mackinac, through Michigan and into Ontario, Canada. The pipeline has a history of spills, including the catastrophic 2010 Kalamazoo River spill. It was built in 1953, without the consent of Tribal Nations in its path and before bedrock environmental laws existed. It has also never received permission from any of the Native Nations holding treaty rights in the broader region.
The pipeline cut directly through the Bad River Reservation, home to the Bad River Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Once the easements allowing the company to use tribal land expired, the tribe filed to expel Enbridge from its reservation. Enbridge has continued to criminally trespass on tribal lands since 2013.
The reroute
After a federal judge ordered that the line be shut down, Enbridge pushed a plan for a proposed “reroute” around and upstream of the Bad River Band reservation, crossing the same sensitive watershed and treaty-protected territory. The Band, as well as many other tribal and non-tribal communities, are opposing the reroute. This is because moving the pipeline does nothing to remove the damage it is causing.
The reroute would cut across more than 100 rivers and streams that flow into the Bad River Reservation and the Kakagon and Bad River Sloughs, and into Lake Superior, threatening the tribe’s fisheries and cultural survival. The plan harms Copper Falls State Park, numerous trout streams and drinking water aquifers.
“Line 5 is a daily threat to our clean rivers and lakes, our fish, and our wild rice,” said Bad River Band Chairman Robert Blanchard. “If Enbridge is allowed to move this nightmare upstream to get around our borders, it will only endanger more of our homeland. Our drinking water, our way of life, and our very future hang in the balance.”
We are opposed to any expansion of extraction infrastructure in the Great Lakes region. Line 5 threatens one of the world’s most vital and sacred freshwater systems, and the numerous human and non-human communities that depend on it. It also violates treaty obligations across the 1836, 1837, 1842, and 1854 treaty territories.
The fight against Line 5 is emblematic of broader struggles for Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, and the protection of water and earth as sacred beings with their own agency.
For more information please see https://communitiesunitedbywater.org/video-and-livestreams
For the Bad River Band’s most recent analysis of the harms and threats of Line 5 reroute, please see here