Stop Line 3 protests

The Stop Line 3 protests are an ongoing series of demonstrations in the U.S. state of Minnesota against the expansion of Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline along a new route. The new route was completed in September 2021, and was operational on 1 October 2021. Indigenous people have led the resistance to the construction of the pipeline, which began following the project's approval in November 2020. Opponents of the pipeline expansion, called water protectors, have established ceremonial lodges and resistance camps along the route of the pipeline. Enbridge has funded an escrow account that law enforcement agencies may draw on for pipeline-related police work. Organizers have arranged marches and occupations of Enbridge construction sites. Following the blockade of an Enbridge pump station on June 7, 2021, nearly 250 people were arrested. Invoking treaty rights, organizers established an encampment at the headwaters of the Mississippi River at a site where Enbridge intends to bury the pipeline.

The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2) establishes treaties as the "supreme Law of the Land". Treaties between Anishinaabe bands and the United States government guaranteed certain treaty rights for their members, namely the rights to harvest wild rice, fish, hunt, and gather medicinal plants on ceded lands. These rights were upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court case Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians.

Both the existing Line 3 pipeline and the proposed expansion cross lands ceded in treaties. In the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, the Ojibwe Bands of Lake Superior and the Mississippi River ceded lands in the Arrowhead Region while retaining hunting, fishing and gathering rights. In the 1855 Treaty of Washington, two Ojibwa bands ceded land but retained their usufructuary rights. Additional tribal lands were ceded in the 1863 Treaty of Old Crossing, though the rights to hunt, fish and gather were retained.

Enbridge is a Canadian corporation that maintains vast pipeline networks in the United States. The Enbridge Line 5 pipeline, which was responsible for the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, had its 1953 easement revoked by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in November 2020 due to concerns over the potential impact of a spill to the Great Lakes.

The Line 3 pipeline was built by the Lakehead Pipeline Company (now Enbridge) in the 1960s. It was the source of the Line 3 oil spill in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the worst inland oil spill in U.S. history, which spilled 1.7 million gallons of crude into a tributary of the Mississippi River. It was also the source of the second worst oil spill in Minnesota history, when 1.3 million gallons of crude spilled near Argyle, Minnesota.

Deterioration of the existing Line 3 pipeline has resulted in structural deformities that have rendered the pipeline prone to recurring leaks and oil spills. As a preventative measure in 2008, Enbridge halved the capacity of the pipeline to 390,000 barrels per day.

During the 2010s in the United States, grassroots campaigns against proposed pipelines received widespread media attention. An Indigenous-led campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline centered at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation evolved from a small protest camp to spark an international movement against pipeline projects. Following resistance to the proposed Sandpiper pipeline, which would have passed through Mississippi River headwaters and wild rice habitat in Minnesota, Enbridge cancelled the project, withdrawing its application in 2016.

Following years of opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, the Biden administration revoked its permit in January 2021.