Honor the What?
An update on resistance to the Line 3 pipeline, and some learning around the call to "Honor the Treaties"
I haven’t written here about the current fight against Line 3, the silly and destructive pipeline Enbridge continues to try and build over and under the heart of waterways in the middle of the continent. There’s been a decent amount of press, so I figured folks inclined to sign up for this newsletter were already aware, especially with the boost in stories after TC Energy (aka TransCanada; the name change didn’t help them) pulled the plug on Keystone XL.
But earlier this week, a chance encounter at the nearby farmers market made me reconsider. It was one of those mostly inconsequential chat-with-your-neighbor kind of moments, with a couple nearby us who were also waiting for orders from the food carts. They were visitors too, it turned out, law students in town for the summer as one of them completed an internship at a legal nonprofit focused on environmental issues. The group had spent most of the last four years suing the Trump administration, she told me. “Are they going to take the Biden administration on now for things like Line 3?” I asked her. She looked completely puzzled. “You know, the pipeline they’re trying to build across the Mississippi Headwaters, without tribal consent? There are lots of people getting arrested there this week to try and prevent it.” She had that vague expression people get when they know what’re you’re saying should be familiar, or they want it to be, when it absolutely isn’t. She was rescued from further conversation by the arrival of their food order.
“That was an environmental law student and she didn’t know about the biggest pipeline fight going on in the country right now,” I said to the boyfriend later. “Maybe she doesn’t have time to read the news,” he said generously. “People who go about excitedly suing the federal government generally read the news,” I countered.
Still, there we were. Despite celebrity attendance, decent explainers from the AP, NYTimes coverage and opinion pieces; despite climate anxiety as an ever-more mainstream phenomenon; despite the wide awareness around fights like #NoDAPL; despite all this, even those whose own interests would purportedly align with some of these necessary fights against extractive industries remain uninvested in or unaware of them. It’s yet another reminder that whatever social media bubble you find yourself in—for instance, if your feeds are presently filled with protest art and photos of leaders like Winona LaDuke, or maybe even of activists chained to construction equipment, as mine are—that there are people living in other realities, and each day provides opportunities for ensuring that our respective bubbles get burst, or at least softened. She burst my bubble a little, and hopefully I did the same for her.
But let’s talk about a bigger bubble-burster. For me, that includes the language, invoked in the fight against Line 3 and elsewhere, of “Honor the Treaties.” I found it downright confusing for a long time. Thinking about treaties signed between the U.S. government and Native nations, I understood that there were some rights and agreements in those documents that tribes wish to see duly fulfilled, like the ability to hunt, fish, gather, and pray on certain lands. That part made sense. But to “honor” them? When many were signed under the threat of violence, or false pretenses, or by those with no right to sign them? When they were used to remove people from the land? Why would we seek to honor them, rather than to make clear the many ways in which they are invalid? Should we not be seeking to restore what such treaties stole? To talk about them as something that could be honored seemed to me to play into a narrative framework set up by thieves rather than strategic and clear truth-telling.
That might be so, if those government documents were all that was meant by the word “treaties.” But clearly, by naming this week’s actions against Line 3 as the “Treaty People Gathering,” Indigenous pipeline fighters see a treaty as more than that. I remember being struck the first time I received an email from Honor the Earth with that phrase. “Treaty People.” What exactly were Treaty People?
The framing in that invitation said:
“We are all Treaty People--bound by a common agreement to honor treaties made by our ancestors and to treat our water, land and planet with respect. We invite you to stand together with us for our common future.”
I had a real opportunity to feel unknowledgeable when I did a search for “we are all treaty people” and came up with lots of materials aimed at elementary-aged school children in Canada. This in itself was interesting to see—whereas my schooldays were filled with activities oriented toward the settler experience, like making dioramas with covered wagons and, yes, playing a video game as a classroom activity1—kids in Canada apparently get to watch poorly designed slides with the intent of helping them understand their responsibilities as treaty people. Bad slide decks aside, it seems like a better education.
So what’s the point of the concept of “Treaty People,” as well as that slogan “honor the treaties”? The point (especially as highlighted in all the grade school activity samplers I found) is that the treaties make clear the nation-to-nation status of the signers. These weren’t agreements between individuals, and they weren’t agreements between unequal parties; they were nation-to-nation agreements. This is an idea itself that remains contested as cases are brought all the way to the Supreme Court on the ability of Native nations to enforce their own laws or as the Bureau of Indian Affairs only partially acknowledges sovereignty and continues to hold Indigenous land in trust.
But here’s the other piece of that. These are nation-to-nation, not just government-to-government, agreements. Nations are made up of people, not just government officials, and the emphasis on the treaties is in part to implicate many more of us as responsible for upholding the terms of each treaty. Furthermore, as understood by many tribal nations, they are also an agreement with the land. So if one is on treaty land, you are a treaty person, with responsibilities to both the other nation of that treaty and the land.
More from the Treaty People Gathering website:
Who are Treaty People?
Treaty education and protection are not the sole duty of native people. We are all treaty people. Non-native people are living on stolen land and continue to benefit from treaties while not honoring them. It is the responsibility of non-native people to know and respect the obligations included in federal and state treaties. Treaties protect all of us.
I heard this idea of ‘treaty people’ further expanded this week when I had the opportunity listen to a panel at the Just Food conference featuring researcher Dan Duckert, who presented from a paper called “Rights and responsibilities to the land: Rebuilding the meaning of Treaties to provide security,” in which he discussed the conception of a nation as it was already held by the Anishanaabe pre-colonization, in which they understood themselves to be in nation-to-nation relationships with other relatives on the land: fish nation, moose nation, and so on. Duckert is the Director of Research, Treaties, Lands and Resources for the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council and shared how efforts like establishment of a fish hatchery are understood as part of fulfilling agreements with these other nations. As part of treaty rights for Indigenous nations include an ability to maintain their livelihood through traditional means — fishing, gathering, hunting, etc. — part of the treaty agreements that settler nations are also committed to include proper relationships with the nations of fish, of other animals, of plants, and so on.
This feature of treaties mean that they are not simply about our agreements with human communities, but also about agreements with more-than-human communities. So as Treaty People one is not only responsible to Native nations but to the nations of animals and plants, and to the land on which they all rely.
Honor the Earth’s point that “treaties protect all of us”—especially when that “all” encompasses wild fish or wild rice—has been actively demonstrated in recent years. Treaty rights were cited in a case requiring the state of Washington to remove culverts blocking salmon migration. Treaty rights were also cited by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in a decision to revoke the easement for Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline across the Great Lakes.
Whitmer is stirring up a fight over which treaties matter; the government of Canada has filed suit against Michigan and is citing treaties signed in the 1970s between Canada and the U.S. to claim that Whitmer doesn’t have authority to revoke Enbridge’s easement, while Enbridge is actively ignoring the governor’s orders to cease use of the pipeline by May.
Whitmer and Michigan’s attorney general have both dismissed the notion that they don’t have such authority. And the treaty on which they rest their case certainly predates those from the ‘70s signed in the name of energy security; they reference an 1830s treaty that paved the way for Michigan’s statehood. (More on the state of the dispute between Michigan and Canada here.)
Whether or not Whitmer is successful, her tactic shows that we’re in a moment of change when it comes to understanding treaties as part of the legal terrain all governments must navigate. This change has potential even beyond the outcome of pipeline fights. For honoring the use rights embedded in the treaties also helps undermine the more limited notions of land as property that settler signers of the treaties sought to propagate, in which property can simply be transferred from one party to another. Dan Duckert got at this in his presentation by describing treaties as an arrangement on how to share the land, rather than on who ‘owns’ the land. Honoring treaties, then, is not just a tactic to pressure the U.S. government to uphold obligations to which it agreed, though it is that. The call to honor the Indigenous side of the treaties is also a call to honor a different understanding of relating to the land, one in which fences cannot be put up to prevent the seeking of a livelihood. And it’s a call to see ourselves as actively in relationship with that land and the people whose lives depend on it, rather than as a passive presence without any responsibilities for the situation. Yes, elected officials are responsible for fulfilling the treaties. But so are we.
So maybe it took me a minute to get over my semantic and other conceptual hang-ups around the phrase, but I got there. Honor the treaties.
If you’re interested in supporting the Indigenous-led opposition to Line 3, here’s a note sent by Honor the Earth on Saturday:
Join us. There is an urgent need for more supporters to help hold space and protect treaty rights at two locations on different parts of the Mississippi River.
• During the Treaty People Gathering, hundreds of people marched onto the landing where Enbridge plans to drill under the Mississippi headwaters in Shevlin, Minnesota. And many of us stayed. People are still camping at what’s now called “Fire Light Camp” to protect the river and all living things. Learn more at the Rise Coalition Facebook page where you can send a direct message for more information.
• Further south on the Mississippi, In Palisade, Minnesota, water protector Tania Aubid and supporters at the Water Protector Welcome Center are also asking for support. Tania has taken a stand for treaty rights at the second site where Enbridge wants to tunnel under the Mississippi and is asking supporters to join her. Learn how at https://welcomewaterprotectors.com/thegreatriver
For those looking to learn more, both about Line 3 and about treaty history, a little further reading:
There’s apparently a revamped version newly released? Here’s a takedown from a history professor who tried it out, on whether or not the game’s reframing is successful: https://hyperallergic.com/645727/on-nostalgia-and-colonialism-on-the-new-oregon-trail/