These remarks from Minnesota State Senator John Marty (District 66) were made at the Treaty Not Tar Sands rally held at the State Capitol on August 25, 2021.

I’m Senator John Marty, and I’m thrilled to see the large crowd—people concerned about the future. 

We are all honored that the Indigenous Grandmothers from White Earth have been holding ceremonial space here.

We are all honored to greet the Treaty People Walkers—the water protectors who have been walking for over three weeks on behalf of the future.

We have been fighting to stop line 3 for about 5 years now.
We have been fighting to stop Line 3 in the regulatory process and the PUC
And at the Capitol, and in the Courts
We have been fighting to stop Line 3 in this walk, in protests, in speaking out.

Now we are asking—more appropriately, demanding—that President Biden and Governor Walz step in and block the project.

We cannot relent in this request.  Our future depends on it.

The recent UN Climate Report described it as: “a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable.”

And we are here in an urgent effort to stop a pipeline that will not only maintain, but will massively INCREASE greenhouse gas emissions.

Winona LaDuke in her eloquent Letter from the Wadena County Jail articulated how wrong it is that our government has allowed Enbridge, a powerful multinational fossil fuel corporation shoving this pipeline down the throats of the Anishinaabe people.

Winona says:  “We have tried every legal recourse, to no avail. It is time that the Indian Wars come to an end.”

Winona also declares that it’s time to quit fighting with Mother Nature. She points out: “no one wins that war.”

That is the reason we are here. That is the reason we need President Biden & Gov Walz to stop this Eco-cide. We cannot win a war with Mother Nature.

As the essayist Wendell Berry wrote 20 years ago, “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.“

The drought that Minnesota is facing, the ever-increasing forest fires, the hurricanes, the record heat waves—121 degrees in Canada this summer! Nature’s stern sense of justice is already striking back. And the blows will become ever more deadly.

Whether we know it or not, NATURE has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. And it is our children who will suffer. Our children and their children will suffer, far more that the politicians and corporate titans who profit from these foolhardy projects.

We do not have a choice. We cannot relent in our demands. Please President Biden. Please, Governor Walz. This isn’t a political decision. It is a decision that matters for your children. And Grandchildren. Including those not yet born.

Give those generations a chance to look back and thank you for giving them a chance, rather wonder why our generation stood idly by and allowing fossil fuels and the industries around them to rape and pillage our planet—our only home, our only chance at life.

Please #stopLine3

---

Click here for all Line 3 related blog posts.