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[drumming]
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[native chanting]
FEMALE NARRATOR: This is a story of the Bad River people.
One that starts, and inevitably ends,
with Mashkiiziibiing, the Bad River Reservation.
And Lake Superior herself.
This place in Northern Wisconsin
has been their home for thousands of years.
And they are still here,
fueled by the strength and resilience
of their Ojibwe ancestors,
which course through their veins.
A people who've had to fight for and defend their land.
and their water, for generations.
These battles have many chapters.
MALE NARRATOR: The newest one is over an aging pipeline
that runs through the Reservation.
A pipeline that is now at risk of rupture.
where a river, the Bad River, is changing her course.
FEMALE NARRATOR: But this is not just a story
about that pipeline.
It's a story about resistance,
and the relentless cycle of standing up
in the face of adversity.
It's also about the scars that they bear.
MALE NARRATOR: The latest revealing itself
one fateful day,
when a helicopter inspecting that pipeline,
fell out of the sky.
This crash, which occurred in a remote part of the Reservation,
would reveal an inconceivable discovery:
an exposed pipeline.
It seems improbable that a pipe from a pipeline company
would be hanging in mid-air.
MALE NARRATOR: This pipeline is owned by Enbridge,
a Canadian-based energy giant.
And I was like, "What the hell?"
We discovered it by chance,
and it just blew our mind when we seen it.
When it's exposed then it actually
increases the risk of a oil spill occurring.
That's a ticking time bomb.
It's not if, it's when a spill happens.
If it gets in the Bad River, you know,
then it's gonna be taken right out into Lake Superior too.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Lake Superior, which is downstream
of the Bad River, is the largest
freshwater system by area in the world.
MIKE WIGGINS: It is the grandmother of the Great Lakes.
It is the freshwater stronghold of America.
It's, I would say, a freshwater stronghold of Planet Earth.
ELDRED CORBIE: And what we have, with our water being so pure,
we gotta protect,
to die for it if we have to.
* Live from the shell of a turtle about to snap *
* Quail tails, broke spells, jump hurdles *
* Where we at *
* Wish me well, on the journey I might burn, I might splat *
* Pop said you're gonna learn how to earn a stripes *
* Sticking to your pathways Pitter-patter with the wind *
* As across the grass strains *
* Revel in the river for a minute *
* Downstream with the fence No means to an end *
* Brown green colors got it at the mother flooded *
* In front line give a whoop! *
* That's the sound of the cavalry *
* I don't keep it sweet foul mouth no ounce of a cavity *
* Just 'cause you're mad with yourself, don't get mad at me *
JOE ROSE: We are Lake Superior Ojibwe,
that's, uh, Monadu Ojibwe Gichigame...
the spirit of the Big Lake out there.
And that gives us our identity.
And that tells us who we are.
This land was prophesized to our people
that we would come to a place where food grows on water.
WIGGINS: Our people have been here for millennia.
The land and water essentially carry the stories
of how our people interacted with this place.
And it's unbelievably beautiful.
I live in paradise,
When I tell people and I go, "I got 12 miles of lake shore."
And they're like, "Wow, you must be rich".
And it's like, absolutely I'm rich.
We are a rich people,
not in a monetary sense.
Our knowledge is rich.
Our culture is rich.
Our strength.
Our resilience.
I was always taught to be proud of that.
FEMALE NARRATOR: This resilience,
forged over generations,
will be tested by this pipeline and its owner.
But to fully understand what's at stake
for the Bad River people of today
is to understand the Bad River people of yesterday,
the Lake Superior Chippewa or Ojibwe
who fought back, time and time again,
against the wholesale taking of their land and way of life.
This is a story of defiance.
MALE NARRATOR: And it begins with early pioneers
and a reality that is far different
than Hollywood's version of how America was won.
MARTIN SENECA: There was a constant stream of immigrants
that were coming into this country,
trying to get hold of land.
Go west, young man, and get yourself some land.
Well, where are we gonna get the land?
And as they moved westward,
they ran into problems with the Indians.
You have violence, conflict, genocide.
And we're just in the way.
MALE NARRATOR: John Wayne movies and American westerns
served up a different narrative,
with heroic cowboys and settlers
defending little houses on the prairie
from marauding and quote-unquote "savage Indians."
Nazgo, nazgo!
[screams]
MALE NARRATOR: And of course, the cavalry
always came to the rescue, bugles blaring,
when in fact, they were invading Indian Country
and taking their land.
One little, two little, three little Indians...
We didn't silently disappear.
You can't blame it all on smallpox.
Four little, five little, six little Indians.
You can't blame it on anything
other than the intent to take over,
dispossess, eradicate and replace an entire population.
Why don't you finish the job?
The disappearing of indigenous people is fundamental
because if you're gonna claim the land as your own
you've gotta get rid of the other group of people
who claim it's their land.
That's what settler colonialism is.
We had had a removal order
signed against us by Zachary Taylor.
MALE NARRATOR: This removal order was part of
a federal policy in the 1800s
to force Native Americans off their land, westward,
but the order violated existing treaties
with the Lake Superior Ojibwe,
who had already granted the use of 32.5 million acres
to the federal government.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Pushing back against this land-ho
policy of dispossession,
legendary Lake Superior Ojibwe leader, Chief Buffalo,
and other tribal chiefs, head to Washington D.C.,
to negotiate with the newly elected president,
Millard Fillmore, for the cancellation
of this removal order.
Fillmore agrees that for another
13 million acres of land,
the Lake Superior Ojibwe can retain their homeland
with extended hunting and fishing rights,
and they sign the Treaty of 1854.
Chief Buffalo's trip was one of the most important
acts of resistance
and the Ojibwe have been resisting ever since.
There is this deep, deep sense
of protecting this land.
No matter what laws were passed, that part stayed with us.
There's always a threat.
There's always some kind of threat.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Threats to Bad River land and people,
would only get worse after the Treaty of 1854.
MALE NARRATOR: The federal government's
Bureau of Indian Affairs, otherwise known as the BIA,
would soon break up Bad River
and other Native lands into small private lots,
called allotments, a policy reaffirmed by the Dawes Act.
KEVIN BRUYNEEL: The idea was to allot a certain portion
of the land to Indian heads of households in tribal nations.
They had been "allotting" reservations,
chopping them up into pieces.
KEVIN BRUYNEEL: The rest of the land that is not distributed
is now up for sale.
Those parcels were bought by lumber companies.
They should have never been sold.
They should have stayed in our hands.
All of the extra land that is not allotted out
would now be free for white settlement.
We have the dominant society that,
when they were unable to exterminate us,
then they thought the next thing they wanna do
is to assimilate us.
MALE NARRATOR: Assimilation, a policy overseen by the BIA,
was an effort to forcibly integrate native peoples
into American culture,
leading to unthinkable atrocities.
When we were growing up as kids,
there was a black car that used to ride around,
a big black car.
And they were all shiny and they'd drive
real slow down the road.
We know they're coming for somebody, kids.
For, uh...
Well, take 'em away.
We see that coming, we'd run.
We scattered but we knew,
the kids knew who was being targeted.
They'd basically just grab kids and take 'em
and take 'em off to these boarding schools.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Government run boarding schools,
conceived to quote-unquote "civilize" indigenous children,
began operating in the 1860s.
Several Bad River children were rounded up
and sent hundreds of miles away,
to institutions like the Carlisle School.
This was a school that was modeled after prison systems.
So, children as young as four were stolen from their families.
They were taken far away,
um, to the east coast to go to boarding school.
"Kill the Indian, save the man", was the motto.
My grandfather went to Carlisle and endured a lot of abuse,
physical abuse, um, mental abuse.
My father went to the boarding school.
I remember, um...
But he didn't talk too much about it.
It was all of a sudden, "you're an Indian,"
"you're an Indian,"
"you're not an Indian."
We're gonna cut your hair.
We can't let you speak your language.
Your cultural elements are gonna be disbanded,
and we're-- then you become a shell.
That piece of, pulling our children
and separating them from their parents
has traumatic repercussions
several generations into the future.
The conditions of the boarding schools,
according to these formal reports, was just atrocious.
And testament to that are these graveyards.
SCOTT MANNING STEVENS: There's been all this handwringing
and surprise about the discovery of cemeteries
at these boarding schools.
No native person is surprised by any of this news.
You take your kid to a prep school, you don't say,
"Could I see the cemetery while we're here?"
You know?
It's just not part of the tour.
But for Native American boarding schools,
it was a genocidal project.
If it didn't mean to kill them physically
it meant to kill them spiritually, psychologically,
and in any other way.
ANTON TREUER: Pretty soon they were enrolling
20,000 Native kids a year
and they could not keep up.
So, they subcontracted the work to churches.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Although many Bad River children
were sent far away,
others attended the Catholic school
located on the Bad River Reservation.
BEN CONNORS, SR.: I was in college and interviewing my aunt
about the St. Mary's school that was here on the reservation.
Her first response was, "a tragedy for Indian people".
That's exactly how she explained St. Mary's school.
We administered St. Mary's from 1883 until 1969.
We saw ourselves as bringing Christ to un-Christianized.
The nuns, some of them were pretty mean.
We couldn't laugh, we couldn't talk.
If a child was speaking the language, you know,
they would be beaten terribly.
Our congregation, as well as other congregations,
were involved in a system of white supremacy.
It was racist.
The nuns took our language away from us.
They called us "heathens" when we talked that way.
The whole idea was, "your culture is primitive."
They were trying to force that assimilation
into Indian people, making them something that they weren't.
I was an altar boy when I was in grade school.
But at the same time, uh, my mother was taking us,
uh, to ceremonies, back in the woods.
SONNY SMART: Priests and the nuns, they'd come out there
and they would tell 'em,
"It's devil worship going on there."
JOE ROSE: They'd tell us that we were living in a state
of, uh, mortal sin because we had
attended these pagan rites.
Which we were.
We have come to the awareness, in the past couple of years,
of our complicity in assimilist policies
with cultural genocide as its objective.
SONNY SMART: At St. Mary's I talked Ojibwe
and my friend John said, "Don't be so Indionish.
Talk English, don't talk Indian".
I was using some of those words and he just said,
"Shh, shh. Be quiet. Don't say anything."
And just that quick, Sister Cornita,
she had a hold of me by my ear...
and we went flying up to the front of the class.
And she slapped me so hard, you know,
she left her imprints on my, my face,
you know, how hard she hit me.
Oh, everybody's got stories.
It's just, ugh...
My brother came home from school...and he was going,
"ow, ow," and my grandmother came in
and said, "What's wrong with you?"
There was welts across his fingers caused from,
uh, a ruler, not turned flat side,
but on its edge hitting his hands.
She said, "Who did this to you? Was it the nuns?"
And she started hollering for my grandfather
and speaking to him in Ojibwe really loud.
My dad said, "What happened to you?"
And then I said, "Uh, well, Sister Cornita slapped me".
He was mad, you know, and, uh, whoa, so, he just took off.
EDITH LEOSO: We pull up and she pounds on the door.
It was, you know, boom, boom, boom.
SONNY SMART: And she's like,
"How dare you come into my office?"
EDITH LEOSO: And she said, "Do you see this boy here?
Look at his hands."
SONNY SMART: I seen my dad fight before,
and he used to box in the army too,
but I seen him shift his weight and I thought,
"Oh, he's gonna get her now, I thought,
she's gonna get smacked." And so, I thought, "good."
EDITH LEOSO: My grandmother, she says,
"You did that to my children,
you did that to me,
you're not gonna do it to my grandchildren."
So, he just told her, he said, "If you ever touch him again,
I'll be back here."
And he said, uh, "I'll make sure you never do that again."
"If you ever do this again to my grandson,
I'll be back and I'll kick your ass."
And I was like, "Ooh.
Grandma's going to go toe-to-toe with them."
MALE NARRATOR: In addition to cultural assimilation,
the 1940s and 1950s unleash another wave
of challenges to Native sovereignty.
And for Bad River,
this will include the beginning of their pipeline problem.
FILM NARRATOR: For three decades, oil companies
have been drilling with only limited success,
searching, searching, searching.
Then, in February of 1947, 20 miles south of Edmonton,
near the little town of Leduc, Alberta...
Imperial Leduc Number 1 struck oil.
With the last join welded,
oil began to flow and a new chapter opened
in the history of the field.
Production increased and money,
which would've gone to buy American oil,
was kept in Canada.
MALE NARRATOR: A Canadian company,
later known as Enbridge, constructs an oil pipeline
that will move oil from western to eastern Canada.
The cheapest and easiest route for this pipeline
was to dip down to the United States and the Great Lakes
before heading back to Canada.
In 1953, Line 5 is installed on the Reservation,
courtesy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
without the consent of the Bad River Band.
The line is 12 miles long,
which includes about 3 miles of tribal land and
6 miles of allotted parcels,
owned by different Bad River members.
The BIA signs a pipeline easement agreement
allowing the company to operate
on this Bad River land for 20 years.
All for a payment of less than 3800 dollars.
The Bureau of Indian affairs negotiated lease arrangements,
and outright gifts in some cases, to, uh, big business.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs
signed that contract with Enbridge.
The tribal council did not do that.
Many times, pipelines cross Indian land
because it's the easiest way to go.
You could convince federal officials
to just give you a rubber stamp to do those things.
Indian nations are in a constant state of siege.
FEMALE NARRATOR: The siege was about to get worse,
and not just for Bad River.
MALE NARRATOR: In 1953, Congress began efforts
to terminate tribal status,
to get rid of Indian tribes altogether,
in an effort to solve what they called the "Indian Problem."
The Indian Problem is: they're still here.
What are we going to do with these people now?
ANTON TREUER: We have not folded Native Americans
into American civilization.
It's going too slow.
MALE NARRATOR: House Resolution 108 is passed in 1953,
terminating tribal status.
You know, this was all painted in the guise of,
"this is a great opportunity for you,
we're freeing you from the reservation,"
when everyone knew it was a means
of getting rid of Native status.
The termination was hotly contested by Indian nations.
Without the federal system,
without their recognition of our treaty requirements,
we will disappear.
MALE NARRATOR: In addition to termination legislation,
the Indian Relocation Act is passed in 1956.
RUNNINGHORSE LIVINGSTON: Relocation was a pretty clever
idea to assimilate Native people.
It was meant to remove them to these urban areas
and give them a skill or a trade.
We'll move them off the reservation
and then we can close the reservations.
The two laws that go together: termination and relocation.
Sounds bad, is bad.
You have to factor in who is benefiting
materially from the displacement of indigenous peoples.
There was a lot of economic ventures
that wanted to access to tribal land.
When I think about large groups of native peoples moving away,
like my grandfather, and an influx of corporations
coming into the reservation to build infrastructure
to make money, an example is oil pipelines.
SONNY SMART: The Bureau set up these big,
large centers for relocation.
Big cities like Minneapolis, Chicago,
Seattle, Los Angeles, New York.
My mom, she was, uh,
relocated down to Milwaukee with my grandmother.
They came, and they, they're talking to my mom and dad,
and I remember they had a big, like a folder,
and had all these colored pictures of lakes and parks.
You know, they were sold a dream:
that you could relocate to the city, you know,
there's money, there's jobs, there's opportunity.
FILM NARRATOR: The first new arrivals are housed at once.
For they must be comfortable
while preparing for employment or training.
Others discuss their housing needs
and help them find a convenient apartment.
When a new arrival makes a preliminary choice,
arrangements are made.
They offered me to go to, uh, Minneapolis for relocation,
which I found out it was just, uh, another way
to assimilate people into the dominant culture.
They said, "Well, we'll find you a job."
SONNY SMART: A lot of people that left Bad River,
including my family,
moved to Milwaukee, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver.
But while you're there you start picking up
the dominant value system.
MARTIN SENECA: Sometimes people get a one-way ticket.
By the time you get down to the city,
you're on your own.
They couldn't get jobs.
All of a sudden, they're struggling.
There are a lot of issues with people who get displaced.
When I was little my parents left for Milwaukee,
they left me with my grandmother,
and they came to get me,
and I didn't even know who they were.
So, what would this be, these relocation policies?
It's "divide and conquer"
or, we've already seen, it's "conquer and divide".
My uncle was homeless, had issues with alcohol.
I think the issues stem from being removed
and not having, like, that sense of home.
FILM NARRATOR: When the family members have selected
the apartment they want,
friendly bureau staff helps them settle.
Much is to be done on moving day.
I lived on Skid Row for a year.
I was, I was drunk for a whole year.
And I am not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it
because I know, I know what it was, how it was.
A good chunk of my friends that I grew up with,
they're no longer here.
They died by homicide, shootings,
cirrhosis of the liver, car accidents.
Almost all of them are gone.
My dad, you know, drinking later on,
that's kind of what did him in.
You know, it's for me, that what happened to me,
but... also...
that what my father had to go through.
When we got to Milwaukee for relocation,
I was getting jumped, you know,
there was different things that happened to me.
But the racism, discrimination,
and, you know it, it was all built up.
The anger, you know, that was in me.
Fuck you, punk. You know?
Start a fight, you know.
And my grandpa said, "You can't fight all of the white people.
"You know, there's just too many of them.
The lines gonna be never ending."
I went to the BIA, and I said, "Hey, I got a job at home."
They told me, he said, "No."
He said, "It doesn't work that way."
Says, "Relocation is to get you off the reservation."
So, I told him, "Well, F you."
So I said, "I'll make my own way home."
And that's what I did.
* Pull up in a limo with the gang *
* Bandanna strapped like victory the game *
* Put him in the past tense Mask with the glass tent *
* Can't see me, can't be me You trash but you average *
* Gave me the ick The rabies legit *
* Great dane craving to get out the cage *
* Tasting the flesh *
* A mighty fine revolution that can unfold quick *
* 'Cause the sun never sets on a stolen percent *
FEMALE NARRATOR: Meanwhile, for those
who stayed in urban areas,
police brutality was a constant threat.
Natives were getting picked up by the police
and that's when all the police brutality started.
EDITH LEOSO: The oppression, the racism, just hit a pinnacle.
There was a prophecy that said,
"When the eagle lands on the moon,
that will be a time of change for Indian people."
And everybody thought, "Well, that's never gonna happen.
The Eagle can't fly as high as the moon."
Until...
Three two one, zero, liftoff.
We have a liftoff.
You're a go for landing, over?
Down, 2-20 feet.
The Eagle has landed
And everybody went, "What?"
That was the sign that we need to stand up
for ourselves despite everything that might happen to us.
Suddenly, things like red power in the 1960s,
the American Indian Movement,
start to emerge from indigenous people working together.
This was a very unintentional product of relocation.
The American Indian movement was first an urban reaction
to discrimination, whether it was by the police
who would just round up Indians,
uh, whenever, they felt like it
and throw 'em in the trunks of their car
and then let them out later.
My uncle Clyde had stories of police brutality
that were insane to me.
I couldn't even, I-I couldn't even imagine.
Like, he, uh, he was shot.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Runninghorse's uncle, Clyde Bellecourt,
along with his aunt, Peggy Bellecourt,
and his grandmother Florence Holmes,
both from Bad River,
become early members of the American Indian Movement,
also called AIM.
RUNNINGHORSE LIVINGSTON: AIM would not have been
what AIM was without people like my grandmother.
The impact that women had during that movement,
even though it's not as well documented,
uh, was, was huge.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Florence Holmes,
Peggy and Clyde Bellecourt,
and Runninghorse's mother, Katie,
all participate in the Occupation of Alcatraz.
American Indians have secured the Island of Alcatraz.
What motivated us to do this is there are Indians
across North America today that are taking a strong stance
to gain back the lands that they've lost.
There was a, there was a takeover of
the coast guard station in Milwaukee.
So, I was a part of that.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Florence, Peggy, Clyde
and Runninghorse's mother, Katie,
caravanned to DC to occupy the BIA.
A group of American Indians seized control
of several offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
in Washington today.
They were there to protest what they regard
as the Government's past injustices toward Indians.
There was a group of 'em that went in
and it kind of escalated to the fact
that they were taking over the building.
The security was unable to really deal with 'em,
'cause this was all a new phenomenon
as far as Indian people were concerned.
And people go, "Wait, what the hell is going on over there?
What's-- what's all these Native people doing?"
Indians across the country are washing their hands
of this hostile and primitive government.
Those militant Indians who took over
the Bureau of Indian Affairs...
AIM was actually pretty radical, even for a lot of Native people.
It brought our issues to the forefront of the news
and made people aware that, actually,
that there are still natives out there.
There were wrongs that had to be righted
and I don't think the general population
was even remotely aware of that before.
Those activists from the seventies
created a whole generation of fighters.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Back on the Reservation,
the 1970s would find Bad River members
resisting other forms of policing.
There used to be a game warden here
that kind of plagued the reservation.
It was, like, a big cat and mouse game
they played with the Game Warden...
I even remember his name. I don't want to say it.
-Kyle Smith. -Kyle Smith.
DAVID O'CONNOR: My grandfather told my dad that he needed
to get some fish for the family.
And so, my dad went out gill nettin' on Lake Superior.
And my dad said that, he said that day was a perfect day.
And all of a sudden, the game warden came up,
they asked him what he was doing.
And after that, he was taken and arrested.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Arrested for fishing out of season,
David's father files suit against the State of Wisconsin.
He asserts that his rights under that the Treaty of 1854
to fish year-round were violated
and in 1972, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agrees.
We had retained treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather
even though they were unable to exercise them.
My father won his case.
I always saw him as the strongest man in the world.
Always still do and, uh...
MALE NARRATOR: The legal victory of Thomas Connors,
which upheld long-standing treaty rights to hunt and fish,
as well as that of the Tribble Brothers
from the Lac Courte Oreilles Band who were arrested
for ice-fishing off-reservation,
all spark a backlash.
launching what would become known as the "Walleye Wars."
Sports fishermen really resented Native people
because of these quote-unquote "special rights"
that Native people had to hunt and gather,
uh, in ceded territory.
We weren't given anything.
You didn't give a shit.
We gave you's the land.
We found out that one of the tribes
was gonna be spearing at, at Butternut Lake.
And the decision was made to go there with them.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Bad River members head out
to protect native fishermen
who are being threatened by sports fisherman
and anti-treaty groups.
My dad was telling me, he remembers, like,
the caravan of tribal members going there.
We packed like sardines in a car
and we rode out to Butternut Lake.
ESIE LEOSO-CORBINE: When we got there,
there was this massive crowd of protestors there...
and it was loud.
[shouting]
And it was terrifying.
JOE ROSE: There was a huge law enforcement presence,
they all had riot gear on.
All kinds of derogatory remarks being made.
Go home, you red slime bag.
Come on!
They spit on us, they would throw cans at us.
And there's the signs, "Spear an Indian,"
you know, "Save a Walleye."
It was pure racism.
I had never experienced it at that level before then.
They looked at me like I was a disease, I was disgustin',
and I never felt that before.
ED LEOSO: The worst thing I ever saw was pulling up
to one of the boat landings, and a guy got out of his truck
and he was drunk and got his little five or six-year-old
kid outta the car and start pointing at us.
Telling him we're bad people,
all we did was live on welfare,
"couldn't get a job," "lazy."
...the welfare check? Go home!
-Welfare fuckers! -Go home!
You hear gunshots.
You don't know where its coming from or aimed at.
[drumming, chanting]
There was probably 250, 300 people
on the landing trying to block us from getting onto the lake.
Uh, it was... it was bad.
I thought native people were gonna get killed.
[drumming, chanting]
ESIE LEOSO-CORBINE: Joe said that
we needed to bring the drum.
I was one of the people holding the drum.
It's the heartbeat of our nation.
When we started singing our songs, we just felt protected.
And it was almost like this invisible dome came over us.
And I knew that we're gonna be okay.
We were there for the right purpose and that, uh...
Well, spirits would take care of us.
And I was like, "You have no clue about who we are.
"You don't understand our culture,
our religions and our, our beliefs."
A lot of people are not aware of how many fish
that the tribal hatcheries reproduce
to put back into, uh, the lake systems.
Our practices are made to sustain the fish population.
ED LEOSO: We catch the fish, get enough eggs, fill the hatchery.
JUNIE BUTLER: The hatchery is a restocking program for,
not only the people from the reservation,
but it for the whole area, the whole Lake Superior area.
We make sure our eggs are well taken care of which, um,
Junie does, r-real good.
Right now, we're at 20 million eggs,
and out of that, we've raised probably three quarters
of a million fingerlings that go back into the,
into the system.
That's an awful lot of, awful lot of fish
for the future.
It never used to be like this.
It never used to be calm.
Our ancestors had enough foresight, Chief Buffalo,
had to stand up for us to live right here today at this moment.
MALE NARRATOR: In the 1990s, Enbridge's right to operate
across Bad River land expires again.
But before extending the pipeline easement agreements,
the BIA, for the first time,
asks the Bad River Band for its input.
At the time, our tribe was in a financial crisis.
MALE NARRATOR: For 800 thousand dollars,
the Band allows Enbridge to operate
for 50 years on 3 miles of tribal land.
But for the allotted parcels owned
by individual Band members,
now about 3 miles in length,
the BIA extension is shorter,
only 20 years, its usual timeframe.
This means that Enbridge must remove the pipeline
from those individual parcels in 2013.
Which Enbridge agrees to.
FEMALE NARRATOR: The 1990s also bring a new
and different threat to Bad River.
The Opioid Epidemic, which was raging
all throughout rural America.
We know that the more trauma you've had in your past,
in your ancestors' past,
what we actually see is that generations
have higher rates of substance use.
MIIGIS GONZALEZ: These U.S. policies, that were put in place
to kill the Indian within us,
how could that have, not have affected
our wellbeing and our perception of ourselves?
We weren't given the opportunity to break the cycle
cause it was always, you know,
just us living, like, in survival all the time.
Everyone in the community is affected by drugs
and drug abuse and alcohol abuse.
When I think about what we've lost in Bad River,
because of fentanyl and heroin,
and... it staggers my mind.
I went through several years of,
uh, kind of a dark period in my life.
That hopelessness and despair
took me to the dark places in, in this world.
There was a point in time in my life where I did get in trouble.
It was almost like I was being...
felt ashamed to be who I was.
I didn't know where I fit in.
And my mothers' non-native so,
I didn't belong with the whites,
and I didn't belong with the Indians.
I also felt very lost.
I lost my way for a long time.
And then when I did get in trouble, I realized,
man, I haven't been involved in my culture.
[chanting]
I haven't been involved in my powwows.
I haven't been involved in my ceremonies.
MICHELLE JOHNSON-JENNINGS: Those who engage in ceremony
have lower risk for substance use.
MIIGIS GONZALEZ: You find your belongingness
and you find your connectedness.
MICHELLE JOHNSON-JENNINGS: What we know is that love
can interrupt that trauma.
It's all those thousands of ancestors behind them
and all those future ones that will be,
that love you in that moment.
All of those things that we do
have been taught to do by our ancestors,
actually revolve around love.
ESIE LEOSO-CORBINE: As I got older, I found the ceremonies.
I became actively involved with my culture.
I look back at that and think that,
"what would it been like if I would've grew up with it?
What would it been like?"
I would not have been even thinking the thought
of being ashamed of who I was.
There's been this huge resurgence
of indigenous communities
going back to what we already knew,
using our way of life to come back to who we are.
PATTY LEOW: Our people didn't survive
because of generational trauma.
We survived because of generational joy,
and innovation, and ingenuity.
ESIE LEOSO-CORBINE: As much as they tried
to strip away our identity,
and all that trauma that came with it,
they weren't successful.
Because we still have people that speak the language.
We're asking for... [speaks Ojibwe]
Her spirit name.
Say her name.
[speaks Ojibwe]
And that, uh, name, uh, comes from, uh,
just before it starts to rain,
and there's a yellow cloud that comes
and a spirit that comes there.
[speaks in Ojibwe]
MALE NARRATOR: Fast forward to 2013, which is when
the Enbridge easements on the allotted parcels expire.
The company submits a handwritten renewal request
to the BIA, just a few months before the expiration date,
but the BIA won't agree to an extension
without the consent of the Band,
which by 2013, had acquired interests in about 2.3 miles
of the allotted land along the pipeline corridor.
PHILOMENA KEBEC: Our tribe doesn't own all of the land
within our reservation.
There's been a concerted effort over many years
to buy back every single little postage stamp of land
within the Bad River Reservation.
MALE NARRATOR: Enbridge now submits a request to the Band
for permission to continue operating.
But the Band cannot immediately respond
because it's waging a battle on yet another front.
This time against an open pit mining operation
in the Penokee Mountains
which threatens the Bad River headwaters.
PATTY LOEW: When the Gogebic Taconite mine proposal surfaced,
people understood: this is mountaintop removal.
This is not your small-scale mining where grandpa's
going to work with a little pickax
and a, a lunch bucket.
This is blowing up a mountain
and creating something that looks like a moonscape
where nothing can grow.
We were immediately thrown into battle.
And so, I just started volunteering my time.
I offered to drive to Madison.
You know, Bad River tribal members said,
"Hell no, we're not gonna let that happen."
This has become a government of, by, and for the corporations
at the expense of all of us and our environment.
And, you know, we went and testified in Madison.
As a mother, grandmother, a auntie, a sister,
genocide is alive and well in Wisconsin.
We've gotta keep up the good battle.
-Not gonna happen. -Not gonna happen!
We're here, we've always been here
and we're not going anywhere.
My name is Edith Leoso.
My name is Eldred Corbine,
uh, Vice Chairman of the Bad River Tribe.
And I graduated from Northern college.
And, uh, somewhere there I'm educated and now I'm civilized.
Ah, we heard testimony from geologists
and, the last, uh, joint finance committee hearing,
that talked of hundreds of millions of gallons of
sulfuric acid potentially leaking.
We ask for strength and wisdom and courage
as we take on one of the most
powerful forces on the globe.
Well, people from local communities
and local tribes have come out to demonstrate today.
I was talking to my daughter this morning
and she said, "Why are you going out there, Mom?"
And I said, "Baby, I'm going out there so
you can drink water when you are 25."
I'm afraid that this mine, I totally oppose it.
And I'm gonna say this on behalf of my future,
my future relatives that aren't here yet.
The fact of the matter is, this is gonna
prove catastrophic for our homeland.
Perhaps there's been a violation of our treaty.
If they start out there,
there gonna be one hell of a fight.
It's not gonna happen.
[cheering]
We were walking into the Senate chambers
and there's legislators, and one of 'em to turn me and said,
"What, you don't trust the government?"
And I looked and I started laughin'
and I looked back and said,
"Oh", I says, "you're fucking serious."
I said, "If you were Indian, would you trust the government?"
If you look at the way that Bad River has conducted itself,
it is strong and you know, we're bad.
We're just bad.
So, we fit our name.
Ultimately, we did win,
so to speak, you know, the company backed off.
But one of our advisors said, "it's not over,"
you know, "what we have, they'll always want.
They've done it since they got here."
BILL ROUNDWIND: Whatever we have,
they're gonna try and get it.
My grandmother, she said,
"Pretty soon they're gonna want us to all hang up in the air
cause they want everything underneath us."
They just won't stop until they have it all.
FEMALE NARRATOR: On the heels of the mining battle,
the Band now informs Enbridge
that a full environmental review
is required before any pipeline extension can be considered.
But then Mother Nature steps in,
which changes everything.
[thunder]
In 2016, a 500-Year Flood event
completely overwhelms the Bad River Reservation,
which washes out roads and bridges,
including access to many areas
where the Enbridge pipeline is buried.
I think I have PTSD from that flood.
When it's happening in front of you,
you can't, you can't react fast enough.
And even if you do react fast enough, you can't stop it.
The roads were cut off. That was it.
If that pipe would've ruptured in the middle of that flood,
nobody could've done anything.
NAOMI TILLISON: The Bad River surrounding area
was inundated with water,
including what we're referring to as a meander.
A meander would be where the river takes a turn.
The river doesn't wanna do that turn anymore;
It wants to go straight through.
NAOMI TILLISON: The Meander is where Line 5
intersects the Bad River.
In the 50s, when they put Line 5 there,
it was like 310 feet from the river to the pipe.
When I was there in the fall time,
it was 28 feet from the water's edge to the pipe.
And every year that we have a high-water event,
you have water that is scrubbing the topsoil off,
as well as cutting the bank out.
Mother Nature is in the business, right now,
of making sure that that pipeline gets removed
and she's encroaching on Line 5 at the meander.
NAOMI TILLISON: And so, at some point, if nothing's done,
that oil pipeline is gonna be exposed to river forces
that it wasn't originally designed for.
RIYAZ KANJI: When it does, the soils will all get carved away
and what you will have is the pipeline hanging in the air
with the full weight of the oil in it,
where the pipeline can't support
the weight of that oil anymore and could rupture.
When the meander reaches the pipeline,
it's gonna be another Kalamazoo.
You know, a Kalamazoo-style rupture at the meander
in Bad River would be apocalyptic, uh, for us.
Kalamazoo River was, in an instant,
transformed into a sea of oil.
887,000 gallons of oil have spilled...
A spill in Michigan is getting a lot of attention...
Pouring at least 800,000 gallons of crude
into the waterway surrounding this--
Would soon become the single most expensive on-shore
oil spill in U.S. history."
This accident was a result of multiple mistakes
and missteps by Enbridge.
A hefty fine is coming for Enbridge.
Enbridge will have to pay roughly
$62 million dollars in penalties.
The company responsible for the 2010 oil spill
into the Kalamazoo River
is paying another $170 million dollars.
It could have been prevented.
Community members were very, uh, very concerned
about something similar potentially happening here.
ANNIE MADAY: Enbridge had started coming on the rez
and they were like, "Oh, we have these anomalies."
I mean yeah, we have a couple of "anomalies",
and it's, it's such a great English word.
An anomaly is like, say for instance,
if there's a dent in a pipe.
MIKE WIGGINS: It's like a point of, uh, potential failure.
I was on some of those digs.
Six, seven maybe, where they dug up the pipe,
and then covered it back up.
But then they come back the next year.
So, once that started happening,
we started really looking into it.
And that, that's really, when we started
asking those questions: How good is your pipe?
What are they actually doing on our reservation?
What have they done?
We went through a process of working with Enbridge
trying to come to some kind of agreement.
One of the issues that came up was that if there was a leak
in the pipeline and it got to the waterways,
there's no way they could respond to it effectively.
We asked them for additional safety measures.
And then that's when we started getting the responses
and getting the vague responses.
None of it was ever shared with us.
Or, or how they're gonna access,
where they're gonna plan on recovering
or trying to pull that oil back out.
We started hosting community listening sessions
and information sessions.
Community members came and talked about
how they didn't feel safe with that pipeline.
It was, it was, um--
They didn't want it.
People, uh, for the most part,
from what I remember were really upset about it.
Do we know the condition of it?
Do we have any access to data?
Line 5 especially, was so old.
The pipe exists as, uh, an anomaly itself
that does not belong in this place.
And, if left alone,
our land and water will eject
and reject and get rid of that pipe.
If it breaks, you know, it's gonna pour
right into Lake Superior, you know...
and that's bad.
If that water was contaminated,
that seven generation little bit that I left
for great, great grandchildren, um, wouldn't be there.
The otters and beavers need that water.
The bears need it.
Our wild rice needs it.
BRAD BIGBOY: I want my children and our future children
to be able to experience what I did.
And have the resources that we have now.
There's just a lot of things putting that at risk,
and that scares me.
I'm afraid for my great-grandchildren.
My father, when we were talking about all the dams
and the pipelines, he used to say like,
you know, like "They took our land.
"They gave us this little piece.
"Why do they have to go through that land?
"They took all the rest.
"Why do they still have to try to take more
out of that little chunk?"
We passed a resolution which essentially requested
for the decommissioning of Line 5
through the Bad River reservation.
We said, "Your lease expired on this
and we're not going to renew it."
It was time that we stood up and said, "Enough's enough."
You know, "we want 'em out."
I was really proud that, that we didn't give in.
I did a little air dance.
They're standing up for themselves and saying,
"We are a sovereign nation, and this is not good for us."
It's a David and Goliath type of situation, right?
"Little Bad River" and, and big, you know, "big-money Enbridge".
Enbridge should be outta here.
You gotta stop it.
Nah, there ain't no amount of money
that's gonna replace the watershed,
replace the quality of Lake Superior.
It'll just be gone.
MALE NARRATOR: The Band files suit in 2019,
seeking to eject Enbridge from the Reservation,
not only for trespassing,
but because of the risk of a pipeline rupture
at the meander.
MIKE FERNANDEZ: When the lawsuit was filed,
we did everything to try and have a conversation.
We also listened to the tribe
and in listening to the tribe,
we said, you know, "We need to think about
what the alternatives are."
Business agreements come and go every single day.
Our business agreement ended with Enbridge,
and their response was,
"You will not end this business agreement."
It's just like a landlord-tenant thing, you know?
Landlord says, "That's it," you know,
"we're, we're not redoing your lease."
You gotta leave.
We have a corporation that wants the land for their own profit.
They are saying, "You cannot be
the last authority of denial for us."
This is the corporation telling the tribe,
"I would like to see your manager."
It's outrageous that Enbridge continued to pump.
You have a vital resource and, effectively,
you have a tribal community saying,
"We want to shut all of that down,"
and, "we don't care about the millions of people
"that are dependent on
"540,000 barrels of oil
that are going through that pipeline on a daily basis."
My little tribe is standing up and saying,
"We're protecting the water, not just for us,
we're protecting water for the planet."
Not all of our decisions are based off of
what's presented itself from an Enbridge-lens,
but it's more of a deeper, more thoughtful,
future-based decision as a sovereign
about what we'd like to have here
for our people in the future.
We have the right to say, "Look it, the leases expired.
"Stop the flow, dig up the pipe,
remediate the soil," and, you know,
"don't let the doors hit you, you're behind on your way out."
None of our old tribal councils gave away our sovereignty.
None of 'em said, "From this moment on, our tribe will exist
"and serve at the pleasure of
the Enbridge pipe maintenance and operation."
And yet, here we are, years later,
and the company won't move.
This is our land.
Enbridge needs to leave.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Shortly after the lawsuit is filed,
the Bad River Department of Natural Resources heads out
to investigate a remote part of the Reservation,
to survey the site
where the Enbridge helicopter had crashed.
We couldn't see anything at first because Enbridge
had not maintained that section of the pipeline corridor.
It wasn't until we walked around and circled back to the south,
when we could clearly see
an over 40-foot stretch of Line 5 exposed.
-I was in shock. -I was sickened.
We panicked and we started trying to contact Enbridge
and looked for an emergency response.
MALE NARRATOR: Although Enbridge did not respond
for several hours,
the Company later arranges a repair
of the exposed pipeline located at what's called Slope 18.
A repair that didn't go to plan.
I was a natural resource aid
and they needed somebody to go out
with, uh, Enbridge contractors to Slope 18.
They did their fix and it, and it just puzzled me, right?
I don't think they realized that they were building on clay.
And it doesn't take, a scientist,
when you put water on clay, it's just gonna erode.
We know our land. We know our property.
Enbridge, they messed it up twice.
KRIS ARBUCKLE: I brought some engineers in there,
one of Enbridge's main contractors,
and when we got there, one of the tall guys,
he just looked at it and he's like, "Wow."
He kind of had this disgusted, looked at his guy,
his other partner and says I said, "What's up?"
And, "Oh, n-nothing, you know, nothing."
And he tells his partner, he goes, "Who made this?"
He was standing there, and he just kinda, like,
"Wow, this, this can fail in three or four ways."
It's still not a fully functioning remediation.
MALE NARRATOR: Enbridge now proposes a third set
of repairs to Slope 18,
as well as major projects to address
the pipeline problem at the meander,
which the Band rejects.
The Band itself and the experts have said,
"Well if they couldn't do that,
how are they gonna do this without mishap?"
So, so what's happening is Bad River itself is saying,
"Okay, we're gonna assume the risk."
INTERVIEWER: Well, I understand--
'C-Cause we can't get to the pipe.
If we can't get to the pipe, how can we establish that it's safe?
INTERVIEWER: You can shut it down.
No, we can't.
The situation with Enbridge has been very stressful.
They've thrown everything at us,
I think thinking they could crush the Band.
They subpoenaed environmental groups
in Michigan and Wisconsin trying to find out
if the Band was in some kind of conspiracy with them.
And subpoenas, you know,
trying to get at people's personal cell phones.
MALE NARRATOR: The judge denies
this cellphone subpoena request,
calling it part of a "scorched earth policy."
It's hard to fight a oil company
that has a lot more money and resources,
then you do.
I saw the Enbridge situation get divisive
when Enbridge started to
solicit tribal members for jobs.
They started holding meetings in Ashland
and tribal members went to those
just to see what we could learn.
I did attend a couple of, uh, Enbridge's meetings.
STEPHANIE JULIAN: It becomes apparent right away
that it's not that you're gonna learn,
it's that they're gonna take that opportunity
to change your mind.
And what better way to do it than entice 'em with money?
They're trying to win the heart and minds
of tribal members through that,
that short-term offering of, of, uh, labor, work.
When money comes up, it always divides everybody.
They're floating money around in people's faces
and, you know, people that need money.
You have good people making hard decisions.
I will never, ever blame a person
for going out and earning a living.
The whole Enbridge thing really is a tough thing.
We got this, "I want it gone. I want it outta here".
And then you have people, "No, I wanna work."
I was mixed, I guess.
How can you say, "No," to a company
that's gonna give you 30, 40, 50 bucks an hour?
Jesus!
Such disadvantage we're in all the time.
It's just, it's always a struggle.
I am an allotted owner of the parcel
that the pipeline runs through.
Initially, Enbridge offered me $2,000 to sign
a consent form in perpetuity,
but I just put on there,
"F you. Get the fuck out".
FEMALE NARRATOR: Disagreements over Enbridge spill
onto Bad River's social media pages,
where even an Enbridge consultant weighs in.
He posts that because of the positive impact
Enbridge had after Kalamazoo,
people tell him they need "another release."
As in another oil spill.
MALE NARRATOR: A second Enbridge employee,
according to her deposition,
admitted to privately meeting with Bad River members,
telling them that the Kalamazoo River
is cleaner now than before the oil spill.
This same employee, who characterized her meetings
with Band members as "gathering intelligence,"
also discussed upcoming tribal elections with them,
admitting that her Enbridge Colleagues preferred
that Bad River Chairman Mike Wiggins be replaced.
We haven't done anything to undermine him
politically or otherwise.
All we have done is tried to share information
around the need to do certain things.
I don't think community members know what to believe,
'cause they hear from tribal leadership
and then they got that propaganda
on the other side coming in.
The tribe has experienced this for hundreds of years.
The timber companies came here before,
and this is just a new company coming here using old tactics:
"We're bringing you guys jobs, we're bringing you guys money."
"Here's the mighty green dollar
and take it and it'll all be good."
But then what are you losing?
ANNIE MADAY: When there's a spill
and there's no water to drink,
can you drink your dollars that you get?
I don't think so.
We love our land more than we love the money.
That's what I said.
AURORA CONLEY: When you see money as more of a commodity
and a necessity than your own water,
rice, and land, then they did kill you.
They killed that part of you that's connected to it.
They killed that part of your mind
that remembers what your grandpa had to do,
what his grandfather had to do.
It's in my blood memory
that this land is the most important thing
that there is,
because everything else can be gone.
MALE NARRATOR: Enbridge offers the Band $30 million dollars
to settle the lawsuit in 2020.
But the deal hinges on a reroute of Line 5,
which the Company will move
just outside of the reservation,
but still within the Bad River watershed,
crossing waterways and a glacial aquifer.
The reroute is a for-profit path
that is essentially awful.
In a draft environmental impact statement,
there is 139 areas where they're gonna blast.
And they're saying to the tribe, "See, it's just gonna be worse.
Take our money and accept the bad, or take the worse."
STEFANIE TSOSIE: We've already seen Enbridge's record
when it comes to construction.
One piece of that is what happened in Line 3 in Minnesota,
where the construction of this pipeline
actually ended up piercing three groundwater aquifers.
Enbridge Energy violated a series of regulations
and requirements related to
its Line 3 pipeline construction project in Northern Minnesota,
the violations included...
Another problem with the reroute is the impact this could have
on trafficking of Native girls and women.
There's a community-known phenomena
of women facing violence,
being close to natural resource extraction locations,
mines and oil pipelines.
What we've seen in other areas when Enbridge
has engaged in construction,
there's been an uptick of violence against native women.
MALE NARRATOR: Adding to the Band's concerns
about a reroute,
the State of Wisconsin announces
the investigation of a Line 5 oil spill in 2022,
less than a mile away from the Reservation.
We're seeing Enbridge dig up contaminated soil;
this is what we're concerned about.
MALE NARRATOR: Enbridge reports that a single tablespoon
of oil is discovered.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Alarmed by this news,
Joe Bates, a Bad River member,
flies his drone to investigate the situation.
ELDRED CORBINE: They've gotta be some, serious investigation done
on just what happened and to what extent it happened
and not rely on Enbridge for your information.
That's an old pipeline there.
How many more are out there?
You know, how many more leaks are there
that nobody knows about?
Why do they have to disrupt our land
when they took all of our land and gave us this little piece?
So, why should they pollute it?
The people that, you know, are responsible
for putting us at risk, they don't share
any of the burden of risk.
They just benefit from their oil coming across our lands.
The environmental injustice where Bad River
is assuming all the risk for crude oil, is patently unfair.
MALE NARRATOR: On October 22nd of 2022,
Case Number 19cv602WMC,
the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe
of the Chippewa Indians
versus Enbridge Energy Company is called for trial.
[chanting]
Judge Conley, who's presiding,
will decide whether the pipeline should be removed.
The company's in trespass so, there was this sense of,
"Of course we can do this."
But then you get into it, and you realize:
trying to shut down a pipeline, that's a major endeavor.
DEB TUTOR: These big companies do what they want
and they get away what they want.
And, no matter what we do we're probably
not going to be able to stop them or change things.
GREGORY GAGNON: They are so powerful,
that they can just prolong a case in court.
And wait till, uh, Bad River runs outta money.
They've got billions and billions of dollars
that they can use for litigation lawyers
and we're just a little bitty small tribe.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Opening statements begin.
The Band's lawyer explains that the pipeline
located at the meander is at imminent risk of rupture.
Only the judge is not convinced.
MALE NARRATOR: But when an Enbridge attorney
argues there's no imminent danger at the meander,
Judge Conley jumps in, pointing out that
the Enbridge lawyer has just contradicted
his own expert's statement that a major flood
could result in a catastrophic failure.
That meander, it just, it scares me.
Enbridge's put together, you know,
really a slap-dash group of projects
to try to stop erosion at the meander.
MALE NARRATOR: However, the judge,
who's ruled that Enbridge is in a state of trespass,
still pushes the Band to allow Enbridge
to proceed with these projects,
which could include thousands of helicopter trips
or the construction of a 130-foot bridge.
The Band has two huge concerns.
One is just the environmental destruction
associated with this, and why would you allow that
for a company that is already in trespass
to continue operation of their pipelines?
You're talking about real infrastructure.
You don't just press a button and it magically disappears.
We're in a fight against this foreign corporation.
And the fact that this oil company
has taken over our land
and put us at daily threat of evisceration
is an extremely stressful situation.
MALE NARRATOR: Judge Conley then moves quickly
into the next phase of trial:
the impact of a pipeline shutdown.
The judge clearly has concerns
about the economic effects of shutting down the pipeline.
MALE NARRATOR: He tells the parties that he's not inclined
to order an immediate shut down of the pipeline,
because he's worried about roiling the energy markets,
including markets in Canada
where most of the Line 5 oil is destined.
He does, however, reserve the right to shut down Line 5
in the future, noting Enbridge's state of trespass
and its delay in moving off the Reservation.
They've cost us millions battling us in court,
trying to stay right in the heart of the reservation.
MALE NARRATOR: This effort to remain on the reservation
is confirmed by an Enbridge employee,
who admits in court that the company had developed
a strategy to preserve about $600 million dollars
a year of cash flow related to the line.
Enbridge doesn't care about us.
Enbridge cares about their bottom line.
Enbridge cares about keeping that pipeline,
keeping that product moving.
MALE NARRATOR: On the final day of trial,
Enbridge lawyers argue that the pipeline should continue
operating while the Company tries to pursue
a reroute of Line 5.
FEMALE NARRATOR: The Band's lawyer disagrees,
speaking to the injustice of
a continuing trespass by Enbridge,
and the violation of the Band's sovereign rights.
As a sovereign, we made a simple choice of,
"Hey, you know, the business contract ended.
We'd like to part ways."
There's this history for this tribe of fighting so hard
to protect a place and its way of life.
And it just feels like one of these epic battles.
You got a reservation of a few thousand people
taking on one of the more powerful companies in Canada.
FEMALE NARRATOR: This battle with Enbridge
is just the newest chapter of a very old story.
MIKE WIGGINS: As people who are temporary,
we have a responsibility to think about our decisions
in real-time, through the lens
of that seventh generation
that's still out there, yet to arrive from the stars.
Our responsibility is to try to take care
of this place and send it forward.
Our elders tell us that as human beings
we'll go through the four hills of life.
Might say that Caroline lake has
that amniotic globe of fluid, right?
And it spills over in the baby Bad River.
In its youth, it's, you know, it's the small creek meandering.
By the time it hits the Copper Falls complex up there
like a rambunctious youngster it's just roaring and rushing
and clamoring around and clanking everything,
and like a little bull in a China shop.
It's starting to pick up speed
and it's starting to pick up some vitality.
As it gets to the reservation, all of a sudden,
those river bottoms open up, where the meander is,
and you see that mature adult, that's just rolling through.
And then eventually it even loses its hair,
and that's where those trees fall away.
As we make this last turn, that fourth hill of life,
I always think about our journey off this planet.
It's a transition into something different
and other, and, uh, incredible.
SONNY SMART: When a time comes for me to leave this world...
this is where I'll be.
To my great, great, great, great grandchildren.
This is great, great, great, great, great grandpa
and I want to talk to you about who we are as a people.
We have responsibilities towards you,
the seventh generation.
Hold on to your language.
Listen to the teachings of your ancestors.
And pass them on to your children.
Take care of your elders.
Tap into the strength
and the resilience of this community.
Be strong.
Protect what we have here.
-Our water resources. -Protect the earth.
Protect the rice.
Stay close to the land.
Love the land.
Not just today, but every day.
Respect Mother Earth.
Respect your native American land.
Look at your great, great, great grandchildren
from when you're gone and what you wanna leave for them.
If you use it all up, there's gonna be nothing for them.
Speak your mind even though it's scary sometimes.
Don't stop fighting.
And never give up.
Don't let anybody get in your way.
Stand up for what's right.
Fight for seven generations.
Make sure you know who you are.
Remember where you came from.
You come from a, a very strong and resilient people.
Don't forget who you are.
You are strong and incredible.
Believe in yourself.
Be honest with people.
Be strong, be smart.
Get an education.
And do the best you can.
Best day to hunt in the calendar year is November 7th.
No matter what you do clear that day right now.
I hope what we left for you is everything that we had.
And they have passed that on to you.
We hope, uh, we make the right decisions here today.
I hope we made you proud.
We love you very much.
I haven't even met you,
but I love you and I'm thinking about you.
I think love is the answer.
I love you and I'm thinking about you today.
As your ancestors, we're right by your side every single day.
I'll always be there.
You have strong ancestors and I'll always be with you.
We're still here and we always will be here.
Miigwech.
[speaking Ojibwe]
I would just ask them, you know
I'm talk to you in, in Ojibwe language,
and I would hope that as I'm talking to you,
you understand, you know, what I'm saying to you
and ask, just, the spirits to watch over you.
But mainly, you know, that you listen
and you're understanding me in, in the language
of my grandfather, of his grandfather,
and his grandfather and his grandfather.
and his grandfather...
* Live from the shell of a turtle *
* About to snap *
* Quail tails, broke spells, jump hurdles, where we at *
* Wish me well, on the journey I might burn, I might splat *
* Pop said you're gonna learn how to earn a stripes *
* Sticking to your pathways Pitter-patter with the wind *
* As across the grass strains *
* Revel in the river for a minute *
* Downstream with the fence No means to an end *
* Brown green colors got it at the mother flooded *
* In front line give a whoop! *
* That's the sound of the cavalry *
* I don't keep it sweet foul mouth no ounce of a cavity *
* Just 'cause you're mad with yourself, don't get mad at me *
[chanting]
*