In Minnesota, Indigenous-led water protectors have launched a series of direct actions against the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which would carry more than 750,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day through fragile ecosystems — endangering lakes, rivers and wild rice beds. Activists say the pipeline violates treaties signed by the U.S. in 1854, 1855 and 1867. Anishinaabe water protector Dawn Goodwin of the White Earth Reservation held a sit-in protest in the path of a pipeline construction crew on Friday.

Dawn Goodwin: “Treaties are the supreme law of the land!”

Water protectors are also sounding the alarm over thousands of out-of-state workers brought in to work on construction of the Line 3 pipeline, warning they may add to a massive COVID-19 outbreak that’s already overwhelming hospitals in rural Minnesota.