Giniw Collective meets with UN Special Rapporteur Lawlor, discuss Canadian company funding police in Minnesota

Photo: Tara Houska (Giniw Collective), Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth), Osprey Orielle Lake (Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network), Mary Lawlor (UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders).

On August 17, the Giniw Collective posted: “This morning, Giniw Collective founder Tara Houska met with UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor to discuss the egregious human rights violations occurring at the hands of police in direct financial relationship with Enbridge.”

Earlier this month, Houska told Democracy Now! about the funding relationship between Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. and police forces in Minnesota.

She said: “[The police have] billed over $1.7 million to the Public Safety Escrow Trust, in which Enbridge is dumping millions of dollars to incentivize and encourage police officers to repress, suppress and surveil, harass Indigenous people and our allies that are helping us try to stop this pipeline from happening in our treaty territory.”

Emily Atkin has reported in Heated: “Enbridge established a financial relationship with Minnesota law enforcement in May 2020, when the state Public Utilities Commission approved Line 3’s route permit. That permit required the oil giant to set up a special fund that would reimburse police responding to anything pipeline-related.”

And most recently Audrey Carleton has detailed in Vice how Enbridge “has given Minnesota law enforcement $2 million to fund the policing of protests against construction of its pipeline.” Specifically, she reports the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has paid $1,957,011.37 in expenses to date.

The Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. 760,000 barrel per day Line 3 tar sands pipeline would run from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin (just south of Duluth, Minnesota). 531 kilometres of the 1,659 long kilometre pipeline would cross Minnesota.

It would also cross over 3,400 acres of wild rice waters. Anishinaabe water protector Winona LaDuke has stated: “Wild rice is our life. Where there’s Anishinaabe there’s rice. Where there’s rice there’s Anishinaabe. It’s our most sacred food. It’s who we are.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved the construction of the Line 3 tar sands export pipeline in November 2016.

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has documented that the top five financiers of Enbridge are Canadian banks: TD Bank, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, RBC and CIBC. Collectively they have provided billions of dollars in financing to Enbridge.

Giniw Collective post on Facebook.