Two Ojibwe women have sued a Minnesota sheriff for allegedly blocking access to private property where Native protesters of the Enbridge pipeline gathered, in what they call the “most militarized response to an easement dispute in history.”
In a complaint filed against the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office on Friday, Ojibwe activists Winona LaDuke and Tara Houska said that police descended on LaDuke’s property, blocked her driveway, and arrested several residents and guests over three days. According to Sheriff Corwin Aukes,150 feet of the driveway technically belongs to the county.
Under Houska’s leadership, activists have used LaDuke’s property in Hubbard County as one of several base camps to organize in opposition to the $2.9 billion Enbridge pipeline expansion through Minnesota, which they say “violates the treaty rights of Anishinaabe peoples and nations in its path,” according to the complaint filed in Hubbard County District Court.
The women’s attorneys said Hubbard County police have been targeting, harassing and surveilling Native activists for “months;” and what’s more, they are reimbursed by the Canadian oil company from a bottomless pipeline security fund. The complaint accuses Aukes of abusing state power to criminalize and surveil protesters, and asks the court to grant declaratory relief by upholding LaDuke’s right to the easement.
The complaint claims squad cars descended on LaDuke’s home on the morning of June 28 to inform residents the driveway would soon be barricaded, then served them with a notice warning that the sheriff’s department would take enforcement action against anyone trying to enter or leave the property.
“The notice cited no legal authority for the dramatic and sudden restriction of access to the property,” Houska and LaDuke told the court, noting that the path had served as a driveway for many decades without any objection by the county. According to the women, police blocked the driveway for three days, prevented residents from bringing food and water into the camp, and made arrests while patrolling along the edges of the private property.
“Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office citations have charged drivers who use the driveway with criminal offenses, asserting that the long-standing driveway is now a ‘trail,’ no longer amenable to vehicular use,” the complaint said. “The sheriff’s office has deployed law enforcement personnel in substantial numbers to physically blockade the property and to seize and pull over anyone leaving the property by vehicle, citing them for using the only means of exit, thus criminalizing the ability and liberty of persons to come and go from this private property.”
The driveway is not used for anything except access to and from LaDuke’s private property, said attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Center for Protest Law and Litigation, who represent Houska and LaDuke.
Aukes told Law360 he is unaware of any restraining order or complaint, and said his officers simply removed protesters and their vehicles from the public road, where they were potentially blocking emergency vehicles from passing.
“Working with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, [Enbridge] has created what’s called thepublic safety escrow fund,” Verheyden-Hilliard told Law360. Since Line 3 broke ground early this year, police departments all over the state have received reimbursements of more than half a million dollars, and this “extraordinary level of funding” acts as a perverse incentive to go after nonviolent protesters, she said.
“It also incentivizes the individual deputy sheriffs because they’re able to apply for overtime funds for the department, based on the invoices we’re seeing … They’re lining their pockets.”
“It’s an anti-democratic process,” Verheyden-Hilliard stressed. “On-duty public law enforcement is getting paid by the corporation to act against the political opponents of that corporation. It’s extraordinarily dangerous.”
Enbridge’s law enforcement fund is the subject of a federal complaint being prepared by the Center for Protest Law and Litigation.
Aukes said that tapping into the multimillion-dollar fund is just plain fiscal responsibility, and he’d much rather have the company pay for Line 3-related enforcement issues than Hubbard County residents. According to him, those costs include overtime, extra staff, and the expense of “being proactive at different high-profile sites throughout the county,” where Enbridge contractors are working.
“We did take enforcement action,” said Aukes, referring to the confrontation at LaDuke’s property. “The current landowners are not even here, they’re based in Texas. They do not have an easement to get their property through this spot.”
While Aukes said protestors are free to access the property from the township road, camp residents said that police threatened to tow their vehicles when they tried to do so, according to the complaint.
“None of these people that we’re dealing with are landowners,” Aukes told Law360, unsure whether to call them “squatters or campers … or whatever they’re doing on that property.”
“I’ve been here 31 years, and nobody addressed oil issues before. We’ve had multiple pipelines in our county for maybe 50 years, and now all of a sudden this has been flaring up,” he added. “We’ve never dealt with something like this before.”
Aukes told Law360 that no protesters were still being held in the Hubbard County jail. According to LaDuke’s organization Honor the Earth, however, she and six other women were arrested Monday at nearby Shell River while staging a peaceful sit-in there.
Houska and LaDuke are represented by Jason Steck of the Law Office of Jason Steck, and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Carl Messineo and Amanda Eubanks of the Center for Protest Law and Litigation at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
Counsel information for Aukes and Hubbard County could not be determined Tuesday.
The case is Houska et al v. Hubbard County et al., case number unavailable, in Hubbard County District Court.
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