The Seventh Fire

Winona LaDuke models sustainability and environmental consciousness while fighting against the Enbridge pipelines.

By Niamh Houston

In 2016, thousands of indigenous peoples and allies stood in resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in North Dakota. Enbridge, the largest pipeline company in the world, started construction on their 1,172-mile-long oil pipeline, but were immediately met by protesters who argued that the project would compromise the future of local residents. In the United States, the rights of corporations seem to have long preceded the rights of mother nature and the rights of people. This was proven at Standing Rock. “Police were shooting rubber bullets and tear gas and water cannons at people to protect the rights of an energy corporation to put in a pipeline,” says environmental activist Winona LaDuke.

A member of the White Earth band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, LaDuke has dedicated her career to protecting the planet, using an indigenous perspective to do so. In 1989, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which works to buy back reservation land from non-natives and recultivate native plants. Laduke is also executive director of Honor The Earth, an organization that encourages support and funding for native environmental groups while promoting renewable energy, sustainable development, and environmental justice. In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke ran for vice president of the United States with Ralph Nader of the Green Party. In 2016, she became the first Native American woman and the first Green Party member to receive an Electoral College vote for vice president.

LaDuke has also had a long history battling Enbridge. “I attended every legislative hearing… Our organization filed lawsuits, our tribes filed lawsuits. I have tried to make this system work for seven years,” says LaDuke.

Currently, LaDuke is battling Enbridge’s replacement of Line 3, a tar-sands oil pipeline, whose new path threatens to carve through over 200 bodies of water and 800 wetlands in Northern Minnesota. Line 3 puts fragile waterways and treaty territories in jeopardy of potential oil spills and pollution. This was already proven in 1991, when a corroded pipe of Line 3 caused the largest inland oil spill in American history. A similar catastrophe occurred in 2007, when a section of the pipeline exploded, killing two people. Activists have already gathered at the construction site to protest. “The only way that we’re going to save these rivers is if we have enough people out there that they decide it’s a bad idea to tear gas us all,” says LaDuke. “It’s a really tragic thing.”

As the world makes the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, it feels appropriate to question projects that might jeopardize fragile ecosystems in what appears to be a dying industry.

The new proposed line 3 path would cut through treaty territories of the Ojibwe people and put their environment at risk for pollution and oil spills. Potential losses like this prove critical because about 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity is located where indigenous peoples currently reside. In her book All Our Relations: Native Struggles For Land and Life, LaDuke explains: “There is a direct relationship between the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity. Wherever indigenous peoples still remain, there is also a corresponding enclave of biodiversity.” In order to restore the earth and protect life itself, LaDuke suggests people leave wild places alone, free of development and pollution.

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The Anishinaabe, a group of indigenous peoples which includes the Ojibwe, have a prophecy of seven fires that depicts epochs in the life of North Americans. It contains information about the futures of the Anishinaabe, which are still being fulfilled. During the time of the seventh fire, humanity will have a choice between two roads, one green and lush and the other well worn and scorched. Choose the correct road and a final fire of peace and love will ignite. Pick the wrong road and destruction and the extinction of the human race follows. For many, we currently sit at a crossroad: either continue down the well-worn path of fossil fuels and carbon emissions or choose a new path of sustainability and change.

Currently, humans might trod a scorched path. People take more resources from the earth than they could ever put back. Mining, agriculture, and fossil fuels appear to exacerbate problems relating to climate change, with the current economy dependent on their success. Natural catastrophes, such as devastating wildfires and Category 5 hurricanes, appear annually and will only increase in intensity and frequency. One solution might involve a new economy, one localized and free of fossil fuels.

Currently, we have a largely globalized economy that makes us dependent internationally. When consumers buy products from out of the country, the money flows out of America’s economy, leaving us outsourced and dependent on other nations for sufficiency. This feels unstable during times of crisis, making it hard to adapt. In addition, individual communities are so dependent on outside industries, that it is nearly impossible to be self-sufficient. However, the White Earth Reservation has become more resilient through localization, and might prove a model for the future. They control their own food, as well as energy and housing, and any money earned stays on the reservation. This method of localization could be implemented in urban areas.

In addition, localization has allowed the White Earth Reservation to implement a petroleum-free agricultural system. They also utilize Anishinaabe farming methods, absent of fossil fuels altogether. LaDuke also believes in natural biodiversity over genetic modification. She points to the Irish potato famine as the perfect example. “If you have one variety of potato and a blight hits it the people starve,” says LaDuke. “If you have 900 varieties of potatoes like they do in Peru… you’re going to figure out which potatoes are going to not have blight. What we want is agro-biodiversity in times of climate change and uncertainty.”

LaDuke has also begun growing industrial hemp free of THC. This sustainable material alternative dissuades the hydrocarbon economy, and combats microfibers, water pollution and the toxins utilized in current cotton, nylon, and polyester clothing. “Hemp has been grown for thousands of years,” says LaDuke. “We had a pretty robust economy until hemp was criminalized with the Marijuana Prohibition Act. Now, trying to figure out the hemp economy is like a forensic puzzle because the technology isn’t really here.”

In addition to a fabric alternative, fiber hemp can also replace plastics and sequester carbon. Hemp is an easy replacement for both synthetic fabrics and cotton, materials which make up most of our clothing. Cotton consumes over four times the amount of water that hemp does and takes longer to grow. Cotton also requires over two times the land for farming. Like plastics, synthetic fabrics are made from oil and contribute to microfiber pollution in dust, which we breathe in. Industrial hemp seems like a viable solution because of its versatility and sustainability. However, the industry is currently outsourced to China and serves as another argument for localization in a local economy.

LaDuke has helped with the installation of solar thermal panels on homes and buildings throughout the White Earth Reservation. In addition to supplying the community with sustainable energy, the solar thermal panels also provide heating for homes in the winter months. Other indigenous reservations have implemented solar and wind energy projects that sustain entire cities.

Perhaps it’s time to seek a new economy where the needs of people correlate with the needs of the earth. America might learn something from the successes of the native population. LaDuke offers a simple bit of advice for us all: “quit consuming so much and being so wasteful.”

It isn’t too late to fix past mistakes and create a more meaningful, and sufficient, relationship to the land. The choice is simple, continue down the scorched path or reconnect with the green path. For now, we can all take comfort in knowing that LaDuke will continue fighting for us all.