135View
6m 39sLenght
6Rating

We have returned from our 3rd Annual LOVE WATER NOT OIL tour, a spiritual journey by horse and canoe to protect our sacred lands, water, and manoomin. We are very grateful for all the support, courage, vision, and love shown by all the people who joined us, and by those of you watching from a distance too. We traveled hundreds of miles by horse, from Rice Lake Wildlife Refuge in the Mille Lacs area, to the Rice Lake community on White Earth. We paddled Big Sandy Lake and Big Sandy River, Roosevelt and Lawrence Lakes, the Willow River, Hole in the Day and Gull Lakes, the Crow Wing Chain of Lakes and Crow Wing River, and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. We are incredibly grateful to all those who helped us on this third journey, riding and canoeing the proposed route of the Sandpiper and Line 3 Enbridge Pipelines. Many people came to support us in the most amazing ways: baking bread, donating vegetables from their gardens, and food from their larders. Business and individual donations supported our community events, and the day to day logistics of travel. People hosted us in their communities; Madeline Island, Twig, East Lake, Lynn Sue Mizner at Chengwatana Farm, Kathy ____ at her beautiful farm near Backus, and Avay up North Campground next to Lake Itasca; you were all spectacular and gracious hosts. We also thank the musicians who joined us: Aku Matu, the Good Sky Boys, Chastity Brown, Annie Humphrey, Nahko Bear and Sister Tree. We thank the riders who came from far away and made it happen, even through challenging logistics, to support us on this spiritual horse ride: Percy White Plume and the Oglala Lakota riders from Pine Ridge who have been resisting the Keystone XL pipeline, Amber Shaide and Kevin Doorman, the glue to making this ride possible these past three years, Lisa Ringer and Mary Ludington, and the Dakota Thirty Eight Riders who joined us the last day stating how important it was that the Dakota and Ojibwe unite in our efforts to protect this land. We are eternally grateful for your spiritual and physical support of this work, and consider you our relatives. We are also incredibly grateful to Kat, our head chef, and the volunteers from Earth First, who made magical meals of deer meat, wild rice, hominy, eggs and vegetables, as well as tanned hides, and helped move our Tipi. .. You are awesome. More thanks to come, but Cowboy… aka Jim Reents, and Maddie Norgaard, you are forever in our hearts. We also thank the wonderful people who hosted events - Suzanne _____ at her Northern Prints Art Gallery in Duluth, Tommie of Tom’s Burned Down Cafe, Bob Monahan of The Red Herring in Duluth, Mary Kowalski in Outing, Laura Raedeke and Brainerd Coalition for Peace in Nisswa, and Audrey Thayer in Bemidji. It was a beautiful journey on a beautiful land. We began with 3 benefit concerts on Madeline Island at Tom’s Burned Down Cafe, and a fourth at The Red Herring in Duluth. Then we held a celebration at the East Lake Community Center in honor of George Aubid, a great leader of our people. On August 25, we began our horse ride against the current of the oil, with a ceremony in Rice Lake Wildlife Refuge. From there, we spent 8 days riding west along the proposed Sandpiper/Line 3 corridor, finishing with a feast at the Rice Lake Community Center on the White Earth Reservation. We had 8 beautiful days on horseback and in canoes, camping each night, holding ceremonies, and celebrating our resistance and our power in protecting this land. During that time we also attended 3 public hearings on the proposed pipelines, hosted by the Public Utilities Commission, and continued to ask the hard questions and demand a functional regulatory process, which the PUC continues to deny us. We also joined the leadership 1855 Treaty Authority in a wild rice harvesting showdown with the MN Department of Natural Resources on Hole In the Day Lake, where several tribal members were given citations while exercising their constitutionally protected rights to hunt, fish, and gather anywhere on ceded territory. And we had a wonderful turnout for our Slow Food event in Nisswa, a Feast of the Manoominike Giizis (Wild Rice Moon), where Sean Sherman of The Sioux Chef once again blew people away with his traditional foods prepared in the old ways. We are grateful for safe passage, new friends made along the way, and for your support in making this journey happen. We are grateful for this land, our Anishinaabe Akiing, and we will continue to fight to protect it, as our ancestors did. Miigwech, Winona LaDuke