Even the River Starts Small: A Collection of Stories from the Movement to Stop Line 3

By Line 3 Storytelling Anthology Team

Even the River Starts Small is a collection of stories from the movement to stop construction of the Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota.

The collection features anonymous writing, art, and photos spanning nearly a decade, and includes reflections on many of the diverse experiences that made up this grassroots resistance. There are hundreds of individual pieces of writing and visual art in the collection published in full color.

Line 3 is a tar sands oil pipeline that threatens communities, land, and water along its route, as well as the future of our climate. In 2021, despite fierce resistance, Enbridge completed construction of Line 3. Anishinaabe water protectors led the fight, asserting their sovereignty to oppose construction of this extractive project through their lands. For the better part of a decade thousands of people in Minnesota and around turtle island joined together to try and stop construction with a wide range of tactics.

After construction of the pipeline was complete, a group of young volunteer organizers from the movement set out to gather stories from the resistance to create a book that could be given to the movement as a gift. That team originally published Even the River Starts Small, the result of that project, in a limited distribution and gave away copies for free to people who were involved in resisting construction of Line 3. The book is now available for all through Haymarket Books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798888902059

Line 3 Storytelling Anthology Team

The Line 3 Storytelling Anthology Team is a small group of young people who have resisted pipeline construction in Minnesota in various capacities for many years. In the fall of 2021, the volunteer team began to gather diverse stories from the movement to stop Line 3 and honor the years of resistance. They collaborated to independently publish the first edition of the book as a free gift to people who had been involved in the resistance. During the movement to stop Line 3, members of the Anthology Team held numerous roles, from participating in the years-long public regulatory process to supporting dozens of direct actions to halt construction, from coordinating training and vetting infrastructure for the frontlines to screen-printing thousands of patches, shirts, and bandanas. Others participated in the legal support network, a grassroots media collective, and the global movement to defund Line 3 and the fossil fuel industry. Today they are librarians and booksellers, artists, journalists, childcare providers, and community organizers within the climate justice movement, the labor movement, mutual aid networks, and so much more, all based in South Minneapolis in a beautiful community of resistance.

Book preview

The car we were driving home from an action got a flat tire in the middle of a dirt road. The lug nuts wouldn’t budge in the 98-degree heat. I had a few mouthfuls of water left in my water bottle. I gently poured the water into my mouth and sprayed it on the lug nuts of the sagging tire. The wrench began to turn. Saved once again by water. •

There was that time when we were asked what scientists could do to help stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. We didn’t have a good answer, but we found so many along the way.

That time we went to the statehouse with dozens of our comrades and stood under bloody civil war murals while the governor’s handlers talked to us like we were children.

That time we ran through the statehouse chanting, singing, and found the next governor in a small office.

That time the governor, Walz, his name a symbol of what he would become, lied to us, told us in soothing tones what he thought we wanted to hear. That time we knew he was lying.

That time we wheeled live macroinvertebrates in coolers across the east bank to show people the abundance of life depending on water.

That time we bird-dogged Laura Bishop, and didn’t she cry? And Peggy Flanagan tried to evade us, but we ran her down.

That time we organized scientists to go back to that bloody room in the capitol. We knocked on doors, knocking on the press door, the staffer being like, here’s three chairs and we were like, oh no we need 50.

That time we spoke.

That time we yelled.

That time we reasoned.

That time we knew. We knew.

That time we tried to explain the process and we made a video, because we knew the absurdity needed to be captured. That time we showed Line 3 was a hot potato.

The times we learned from Indigenous teachers about Indigenous sovereignty, and our responsibilities as treaty people. We are still learning.

That night we sat together in someone’s kitchen, writing detailed reports, trying against their avalanche of data and money. That mismatched power staring us in the face. But we had snacks.

That time we went to Clearbrook to confront Enbridge. It was Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a day of mourning, a day that we realized what rural white supremacy looks like.

The time we first saw those beautiful banners. It was the same time we saw those tractors and heard those screams and saw the violence.

The times we heard a leader say, What happens to the water happens to the women, to whole roomfuls of us, to friends and colleagues shaken to our core.

The time we met with the Pollution Control Agency about the permit and it sucked our souls out.

That other time we got up at 3:30 am to sit in the front row at the Public Utilities Commission to testify. We didn’t have the matching shirts that Enbridge’s paid attendees had, with their donuts and big buses. But we got up and we sat in the front row. That time we were seen.

That time we went north. The cops, or sheriffs, or armed guards followed us. Stopped us. Talked to us. Harassed us. Threatened us. That time we talked back to them, allegedly.

The times, so many times, we met. And all of that time on Signal, allegedly plotting and planning, but sometimes making jokes.

The times we tried to figure out how to write collective public comments about permits, why there should be no permits, why we should not build Line 3.

The times we made maps and diagrams, making visible the destruction across webbed networks of blue, across the green swath of floodplains.

The times we each grappled with our identities, with positionality, with expertise, with who faces forward, with privilege, with whiteness, with solidarity, with justice.

The time we spent all summer writing legal testimony.

The time we saw the frac-out in real time at Firelight.

The times we were carried forward by the energy, the vigilance, the bravery of fellow water protectors.

The time we had to talk down the park ranger of Itasca State Park from kicking people out of the headwaters press conference.

The time we taught about the groundwater and the river waters, and their relationship.

All the times we talked to the press, so often like ramming our heads against the wall.

That time Enbridge pretended to clean up the frac-out with brooms and mops and buckets and no protective gear and it looked like a photoshopped picture. But it wasn’t.

That time we got the water samples, and watched the drone footage, and knew it had happened.

The time we hung up that poster at the state fair. (We’re still laughing.)

That time, all sweaty in the kitchen, when we only had two hours to go through 200 pages. Thanks Department of Natural Resources.

That time we confronted the governor for his support for tar sands and the Twin Cities Coalition 4 Justice 4 Jamar campaign confronted him first and we felt solidarity echo.

That time at Hard Times.

That time we confronted power, shouted at it, and we were told to be civil, we were told about free speech and process and we were told it would all save us. Instead, we disrupted, and we told them about direct action, and we got kicked out for handing out pamphlets. That time it all happened again.

Those other times at Hard Times.

That time we were there, in the hot and dusty fields and the sticky pavement, and the cold and lonely cells.

That time we sang.

That time we shut shit down, allegedly.

That time we stayed up all night long, stuffed in a van, under the stars, with nerves wracked, dusty, tired, to be there when we got out of jail.

That time we watched the gate, fixed it too, and got caught in a rainstorm, and then the fat chipmunks came out to run through the garbage bags.

That time we stayed up all night for our security shift, listened to the sounds of the pipeline being built, seeing the glare from the lights, hearing the stream gurgle, feeling like we had already lost.

That time the police pulled us over, for no reason, and we feared being dragged back to jail.

That time we spent trying to stop a mistake, a crime. That time we spent trying to make sure we all had a future. •

They Said It Would Happen

They said it would happen, and it did.

We were warned by the victims themselves.

Just as it has been for four hundred years.

In 2017, Indigenous women of Minnesota traveled from all directions to the State Capitol to testify against a permit to Canadian Enbridge’s Line 3. With the knowledge that it wasn’t just Uni Maka or Shkaakaamikwe, Mother Earth, who would be violated, but our own women, girls, and communities. That’s the way it has been from the moment Colonizers stepped foot on this continent or any other, for that matter. The women came to speak their truth of historic trauma endured by themselves, their relatives, and ancestors when loved ones went missing and were murdered with no justice.

That same summer, having completed my first legislative session in the Minnesota House of Representatives, I listened one evening to a report on BBC radio reviewing Canada’s initial report on their MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) Task Force. The data and the stories were heartrending to listen to. Truth is, comparably in the U.S., most Native women expect that they will be victims of violence within their lifetime. Approximately 80% of Native women will experience some form of physical abuse and over half will experience some type of sexual assault. Those who are victims of homicide are often killed by a non-Native or an intimate partner.

It wasn't just Uni Maka or Shkaakaamikwe, Mother Earth, who would be violated, but our own women, girls, and communities.

It was at the same time that Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, Spirit Lake Nation, went missing in Fargo, North Dakota. Savanna’s body was found floating in the Red River near the North Dakota-Minnesota border by a group of kayakers. She was 22 years old and eight months pregnant when she was murdered by a neighbor, having stolen the baby from her womb.

When legislation was immediately proposed by U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, combined with the action of our northern neighbors, I knew that it was time for Minnesota to step up and address the generational injustice. With those incidents in mind, I marched back to the Capitol and began working on our own MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) task force with input of our Indigenous community. We passed that legislation and completed the report despite the pandemic, in just 18 months. We went on to establish the first-in-the-nation permanent MMIR (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives) office within our state government and continue to work on systemic change to ensure the safety of all.

Fast forward to 2021.

They said it would happen, and it did.

When those Indigenous women of Minnesota arrived from all directions to the State Capitol to attend the Line 3 PUC (Public Utilities Commission) permit hearing, they traveled to tell the history of violence against our communities and loved ones. To speak of their fears that they knew to happen time and time again, that violence would come to their communities. Evidence and data have proven that the pandemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women is directly linked to fossil fuel production. According to Seeding Sovereignty, there is a direct correlation between increased rates of sexual abuse, trafficking and domestic violence against women and children in regions where fossil fuel extraction companies set up ‘man camps’ to house workers. The link between oil extraction and violence is a fact. The high rates of sex trafficking of Native women and girls is proven.

Knowing this, the women faced an indomitable force of Enbridge employees, supporters, and hired seat holders. They dared to ask the question: whether, when, and how do the experiences of women matter? Are women’s lives, particularly Indigenous women, valued?

The women testifiers warned the public and Minnesota PUC with their hearts in their voices and tears in their eyes, but were scoffed at, laughed at, and blatantly disrespected as their testimony was dismissed with the arrogance of white patriarchy. They were the voices of American Indian women who are survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuses. Their vulnerability was controlled by men through addiction and violence to be used, abused, and trafficked for sex.

The violence against Native communities during the Dakota Access Pipeline was fresh in their minds when the women spoke in alarm against Enbridge and Line 3. Unfortunately, as we know, the permit was allowed, Line 3 was rushed through and just as the women prophesized, communities became unsafe, and the men came…

It was ironic that on the final day of Minnesota’s historical MMIW task force meeting, June 2021, we received the news of new arrests from the second sex trafficking sting operation. Booked into the Beltrami County Jail on solicitation of prostitution and commercial sex were six men who had responded to an advertisement placed on a sex ads website. At least two of the men were subcontractors of Enbridge’s Line 3.

The first sex trafficking sting happened in February 2021, resulting in two of Enbridge’s Line 3 employees charged in an Itasca County human trafficking bust. All along the process, Enbridge touted zero tolerance for illegal behavior — but what could be expected when rural communities are flooded with 4,000 men, flush with cash, time on their hands?

They said it would happen and it did.

Nevertheless, we’re not done fighting for the safety of our communities, for justice and a safer future for the next seven generations. Our ancestors did not give up, neither will I. •

Across Canada and the United States, red dresses are hung as a symbol to commemorate and raise awareness about the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and relatives.

Migizi Will Fly: often delivered as a battle cry or the final thought of a poignant speech. These are words of consolation, touching enough to forever etch into a forearm. It is a vow.

Those magical, serendipitous moments when someone spotted Migizi in flight, an audience of comrades would suddenly unslouch, dust off, and gaze upwards at the Eagle coasting on an air current. I never cared much for bird watching, but in those moments I was captivated by something so free.

Even on those days when no winged spirits materialized, the essence of the Eagle was ever-present. It is his piercing glare we cast onto Enbridge. He gave his talons to slash our chains, his screech to carry our chants, it was his tenacity that fueled us.

Once, from the jumble of art and things hung over time on the fenced perimeter, we managed to untangle a length of string, tied to the very end of which was a kite: a bald eagle painted brightly with gaping mouth, protracted claws, and a dazzling rainbow tail. The chilling winds and lengthy security shift suddenly took on new possibility. We released the bird. People gathered. The usual deep stillness accompanied by a sighting left us, and on that day there was hollering and so much running. From far away, one might have mistaken us resistance camp residents for patriotic children. With laughter jumping from our cold bodies, many people tried and mostly failed to keep the flimsy, plastic frame airborne.

However, Eagles were never meant to be chained; eventually, the frail string snapped, and the kite careened to the dirt. But for a glorious second, despite so much, the promise was fulfilled, and Migizi flew. •

Tobacco, and the sharing of it, is sacred.

For most of my life, I only had cigarettes my sister shared with me

Eight months after her death, on my way to the frontlines,

I missed the smell of smoke and the moments we healed together

My second day at the capitol, over eggs, coffee, and a community pack of cigs,

I shared my extra narcan and the knowledge to use it

Does it feel to you like something is missing here?

Near the grass outside Walz’s mansion,

between escaping being kettled in the alley and the arrests

K and I sat and smoked on the curb

A brief and beautiful gift

I could still taste tobacco

when I linked elbows with water protectors by the gate

and when 12 ripped us apart

When we were released over 50 hours later

Our comrades were waiting with cigarettes and sprite

My body was visibly battered

one bruise a distinct handprint

from the cop with no name or badge number

The medics approached me

and helped me take pictures

They gave me compassion and Arnicare in a pink Ziploc

Months later, when my arrest comes across my FYP

when my comrades’ screams are stuck in audiation

I miss the smell of smoke and the moments we healed together

I try to remember all the times we shared cigarettes •

Dear Pennington County Sheriff's Office and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz,

My name is not important right now. I am 20 years old, Two-Spirit, activist and street medic for an Indigenous led street medic collective. I was among those arrested during the Sun Dance ceremony at the Red Lake Treaty camp. On Friday, July 23, I was in sacred ceremony and peaceful prayer with many others on unceded Treaty land of the Red Lake Nation as protected by our article 6 and first amendment rights, declaring treaties as the supreme law of the land and protecting religious practices.

Ceremony started at dawn, and by noon riot police had surrounded those in prayer on all sides. I saw no riot. I saw no disturbance of peace. What I saw were water protectors from all walks of life and from all over coming together to pray for our Mother Earth, for the water, for the future of all the Creator’s creatures. Despite this, I watched as law enforcement violently grabbed, assaulted, and detained those dear to my heart and then eventually myself as well. We sat in jail for four days. Many of us were denied repeated requests of emergency medical treatment, prescription medication, changes of clothes, and menstrual products.

Police showed a blatant disregard for constitutional law, human life, and Mother Earth. This is a disregard that will not stop with reform, it will not stop with new laws or optional standards. The police are in Enbridge’s pocket, receiving exorbitant amounts of money to fund riot gear and encourage arrests. This traumatic encounter I and multiple other water protectors had is far from unique, you do not have to try hard to find them. None of us wanted to be arrested, but when the land, water, and our way of life is under threat, what else do we have to lose? Where do we draw the line if not here? Our entire existence is on the line, and we should not be deemed criminals for trying to protect Mother Earth and the living beings on her. Hundreds of water protectors are facing criminal charges for engaging in peaceful protest, dissent, and prayer. I am just one of those, I am not the first nor the last. I know firsthand the devastating effects that being put through the criminal justice system has. I see no justice in the persecution of those saying, we care about Mother Earth, we care about the water.

Do not make us criminals for fighting for a future worth living.

Tim Walz and the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, the damage has already been done. However, it is not too late to do what is right. I am writing this letter to tell you to drop the charges. Drop all the criminal charges against the water protectors of Minnesota. We have put blood, sweat, and tears into trying to give all of us a future on a livable planet. We have put our freedom on the line because we are in a state of climate emergency across the globe. Do not make us criminals for fighting for a future worth living.

Sincerely,

One of many •

This skirt is the one I was wearing while arrested.

My friend & I watched the line buzzing around Northern Minnesota all winter: windows down, masks on, taking photos, documenting pipeline construction/destruction. The pipeline workers, mostly from out of state, knew they were being watched. We kept our eyes on animals and plants and kept our courage. •

Author’s Note: Fragments from journal entries —

November 2020 to November 2021.

I'm up at camp, sleeping in my car, learning about direct action with people who care about creating a sustainable & just future…

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The permits for this pipeline were approved much too soon — I have years of learning to do still if I want to know how best to act now. This is combined with a deep feeling of necessity — I must do something & I must do it now. Anything could happen — I might spend days in jail, or years. We might stop construction, it might be finished by summer’s end.

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The police put up yellow tape in a twenty-foot radius around the tree sits, & Enbridge proceeded to tear out all the surrounding trees with a feller-buncher. We watched it all, worried about our friends & feeling the need to do something. One guy, B., said he would lock down to the machine. So, we charged the site…

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There’s clothes strewn about in the trailer, & graffiti on the wooden makeshift bunk beds: Smoke weed for days! Stop Line 3 FOR FUCKS SAKE, ACAB.

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Tomorrow I’m going to clean out the meat coolers. They smell really bad.

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The landscape is so beautiful here, especially after very cold nights when every tree branch & evergreen needle gets covered in a white sparkling frost. The result is a glimmering, breathtaking mass of trees that shimmer under the opaque sky. Crystalline flecks of ice patterned themselves crisply on the top layer of snow today. And the rivers are all frozen over — with tracks left behind by rabbits, foxes & deer crossing over the banks.

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It’s sickening how quickly they can tear through the forest.

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Sometimes, the construction of this pipeline feels like the end of the world as we know it. I let it feel that way, sometimes.

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S. texted me saying her car spun off the road, about 45 minutes from camp. R. has a truck with four-wheel drive, & we drove together to pull her out. He was driving way too fast on the icy roads, then correcting when the wheels of his truck slid out of control. He was blasting 2000s RnB, smoking cigarettes, eating Peach-O’s, & choosing songs on his phone while driving. He was boisterous & quick to share…

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I realized today that I’m not sure what an HDD even looks like.

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They’ve moved in a pipe-bender, a vaccuworks suction pipe lifter, & some long segments of pipe (four trucks with three segments each). We also scouted the X. site, first by foot & then with a drone…

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Workers have brought in a