Treaty Rights Battle Links Hunting and Oil Pipelines in Minnesota

Members of several northern Minnesota Ojibwe Bands are preparing a legal challenge to reaffirm hunting, fishing and gathering rights guaranteed by their 1855 Treaty with the United States. In recent decades, tribes have overwhelmingly prevailed in similar legal challenges in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes Region. However, the implications of the 1855 challenge go deeper.

“It is important that everyone understands the indigenous environmental justice focus of this challenge,” says Winona LaDuke, White Earth Ojibwe and executive director of Honor the Earth. “This landscape is threatened by two major pipeline proposals, Sandpiper and Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 Replacement, which could adversely affect the health of our people for generations. It is clear that neither the state nor these companies are going to voluntarily accept the existence of our legal rights.”

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/07/22/treaty-rights-battle-links-hunting-and-oil-pipelines-minnesota-165233