A drum ceremony and blessing by the Little Horse Drum Group, led by Terry Goodsky, greeted the riders. Supporters surrounded the singers on the grassy edge of a roadside outside of the Superior Terminal of the Enbridge pipeline.
Marty
Cobenais of the Indigenous Environmental Network said, "The blessing will
bring spiritual guidance to keep the Alberta tar sands in the ground and stop
this assault on Mother Earth."
The
proposed pipeline, if completed, will make it the largest tar sands pipeline in
the world. Honor the Earth, with the support and leadership of founders Winona
LaDuke and the Indigo Girls, intends to draw attention to the current
expansion, which is under consideration by the Minnesota Public Utilities
Commission. Late this summer, the Commission re-opened deliberations on the
pipeline, which will carry "the dirtiest oil on the face of the
earth," according to a statement by Honor the Earth.
Activist LaDuke
expressed concern about Enbridge's maintenance history on an existing
sixty-year-old pipeline that runs under the Straits of Mackinac. The Straits
connect Lake
Huron and Lake Michigan . The current expansion request
would allow an additional 50,000 barrels per day. The National Wildlife
Federation estimated that even with a shut-off time of
eight minutes after a rupture, as much as 1.5 million gallons could spill from
this pipeline into the Straits of Mackinac.
"There
are a lot of unemployed or potentially employed union workers who would
appreciate jobs in making these oil pipelines safe," LaDuke said in a
statement. "We should put our people to work cleaning up American
infrastructure, from bridges to sewer systems and pipelines, before we put them
to work destroying Mother Nature."
Enbridge
does not have a stellar maintenance record.
843,000
gallons spilled from an Enbridge pipeline into Michigan 's Kalamazoo River in 2010. The Environmental
Protection Association estimates that now, three years after the spill, 280,000
gallons still remain in the river.
In 2002 an
Enbridge pipeline dumped 48,000 gallons of oil west of Cass Lake Minnesota. On
site monitoring indicates continuing crude oil
contamination of the groundwater aquifer today.
A
50,000-gallon spill in 2012 near Grand Marsh Wisconsin prompted the United States
Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Administration
(PHSMA) to order Enbridge to submit plans to improve the safety of the Lakehead
System.
The Great Lakes waterways are the world's largest
freshwater system and contain one fifth of the freshwater in the world. Water
is not a renewable resource.
The riders
will cross treaty land and meet with community and indigenous leaders--urging
local input into pipeline expansion proposals.
The Honor the Earth Ride Schedule is as follows:
Sept 30th
Day 2: Ride from Kiiwenzii camp to Brookston (14 miles). Spend afternoon in
Brookston. Community events.
Oct 1st Day
3: Ride from Brookston to Floodwood (18 miles)
Oct 2nd Day
4: Ride from Floodwood to Wawina/Swan River (21 miles)
Oct 3rd Day
5: Ride from Swan River to Grand Rapids/La Prairie (23
miles)
Oct 4th Day
6: Ride from Cohasset to Ball Club Powwow Grounds (20 miles)
Oct 5th Day
7: Ride from Ball Club to Bena for rest. Bena to Cass Lake Powwow Ground (36
miles).
Oct 6th Day
8: Rest in Cass Lake
Oct 7th
FINAL DAY : Cass Lake to Leonard (31 miles). Option to
trailer South of Bemidji, bypass and restart North of Bemidji.
Departure
times will be decided the night before each departure, and arrival times will
depend on the horses.
> The article above was written
by Georgianne Nienaber, and is a shortened version of an article that first
appeared in the Huffington Post.
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