Meet the Indigenous Youth Fighting to Avoid the Next Pipeline Disaster

A group of indigenous youth fighting the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline will undertake a 250-mile canoe journey across northern Minnesota to fight for cleaner lakes, the manoomin (wild rice) beds and the 1855 treaty territories of the Ojibwe people.

“When you ask me what this pipeline will be affecting, look right here. It’ll be affecting me,” says 16-year-old Nolan Berglund.

Rose Whipple, 16, says she’s going on the canoe journey to raise awareness about the crude oil pipeline that “a lot of people do not know about.”

Nina Berglund, Nolan’s sister, puts it this way: “I’m going on this journey to show not only Enbridge, but my people, and hopefully the rest of the United States, that us native youth, we care about our environment. We care about what happens to our earth. We care about what happens to our own motherlands. And when we see Enbridge coming in and taking over our lands, the lands that belonged to our ancestors, it breaks something within us—but then it also ignites the fire that wants us to fight back.”