Mother Jones: How Giving Legal Rights to an Indigenous Food Could Stop a Pipeline - Enforcing the Rights of Manoomin

2/9/2022

From Mother Jones:

In 2018, Frank Bibeau, a member of and attorney for the White Earth band of Anishinaabe—the largest of the six federally recognized Indigenous reservations that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe—had an idea. After years of dutifully participating in the state’s regulatory processes around Line 3, Bibeau was coming to realize in 2018 that he’d have to find a new strategy that went above and beyond the usual legal tactics used by environmentalists. This was the right moment to utilize the rights of nature laws within an indigenous context.

In August, as the construction on Line 3 was finalized and the oil set to flow, White Earth filed a lawsuit in tribal court against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The lead plaintiff was Manoomin.

“We’ve tried playing their game, we’ve tried playing under their rules and laws, and those things didn’t work,” Bibeau said.

The latest iteration of the fight to stop Line 3 could be the plan Bibeau hatched in 2018: the rights of Manoomin.

Read the full article in Mother Jones - How Giving Legal Rights to an Indigenous Food Could Stop a Pipeline - here.

Webinar on Rights of Manoomin

Recently, Frank Bibeau and Thomas Linzey of CDER, both mentioned in the Mother Jones article, participated in a Rights of Manoomin webinar sponsored by The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), Honor the Earth, the Native Organizers Alliance, and Menīkānaehkem.

Click on the button below to watch the webinar - The First Rights of Nature Case Goes to Tribal Court: The Case for Manoomin.