Why I’m driving 1,800 miles to the Treaty People Gathering
During a year of lockdown, there were many places I dreamed of going, and northern Minnesota was not one of them. But three weeks ago I received an invitation — from Honor the Earth, RISE Coalition, Giniw Collective, MN350, Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light, and many more — asking allies to come to northern Minnesota in June.
It was an invitation I couldn’t refuse.
My ‘climate book club’ is currently reading As Long As Grass Grows, by Dina Gilio-Whitaker, about environmental justice from an Indigenous American perspective. The book begins by laying out the horrors of the North American genocide — a devastation so massive and so total, it was shocking to read about, even for someone who spent nine years making a film about Indigenous sovereignty. (The US recently made such a big deal about acknowledging the Armenian genocide… and yet it barely even recognizes the American genocide that undergirds our own nation. Go figure.) Native Americans survived a continental apocalypse, from which they are only beginning to recover. So I think we all owe them pretty much whatever they ask for. And right now, they’re asking for help to keep Enbridge from building a pipeline that would violate Indigenous treaty rights, carry 700,000 barrels of tar sands oil from Canada each day (a climate impact on par with Keystone XL), and pose an existential threat to waterways, including the Mississippi River.
For the past year or more, the Anishinaabe people have been holding off this terrible, disgusting pipeline, and now they’re asking for help. When a similar call went out to join the water protectors at Standing Rock, I wasn’t able to go — but I met a bunch of them when they were in California, and they were AMAZING. Some of the same people are now fighting Line 3, and this time, I’m able to join them. I just hope I can make myself useful.
Figuring out how to get to the Treaty Gathering was no easy task. Flying, I decided early on, was out– I just couldn’t justify emitting almost a metric ton of CO2 to get there, and I have the flexibility right now to travel more slowly. But the train proved… impossible. (Furious footnote: the US *really* needs a better train system.) Everyone else I knew who was going to the gathering from California gave up and decided to fly —so after a week of agonizing I just gave up and decided not to go at all.
And then, out of the blue, I got an email from a friend at the UU Church, telling me that one of our affiliated ministers was going — and did I want to join her? A couple of phone calls and 48 hours later, I’m now packing bug spray and mosquito netting and getting ready to head out on the open road. I will be traveling with *two* UU ministers — Mary and Lindi — and it will take us three days of solid driving to get there. We leave tomorrow, with our first stop planned for Burley, Idaho.
