This week on Minnesota Native News we hear the latest on the line 3 oil pipeline permitting process and visit a celebration for new Native physicians.
Transcript
STORY #1 - The Latest on LINE 3
Honor the Earth and 2 Ojibwe tribes have filed filed petitions to strike down the environmental impact statement for the Line 3 oil pipeline replacement. Melissa Townsend tells us more.
Before a permit can be granted or denied for the new Line 3 oil pipeline, the state must release a report detailing all the environmental impacts of the project.
On May 1st, after two years of research and community input, the state Public Utilities Commission declared the Line 3 environmental impact statement adequate and final.
But throughout the last 2 years tribes and Native led organizations, like Honor the Earth, have said NO - the report is not adequate.
And now that the PUC has ruled it final, they are filing formal petitions for reconsideration.
Paul Blackburn is staff attorney with Honor the Earth. He says, for one, the potential impact on particular waterways are not well researched in the report.
BLACKBURN: Most people know the St Louis Estuary and Duluth Harbor have a great deal of contamination in it down in the sediments. And if there were an oil spill, you’d have a combined mess of a lot of gloppy oil at the bottom of the harbor mixed in with those toxic sediments. And the question is how do you clean that up? (:19)
He says if you start trying to remove the oil, you stir up the toxic sediments and you’ve got a whole new mess. Honor the Earth is arguing for a more detailed impact analysis.
In addition to Honor the Earth, the Mille Lacs Band and the Fond du Lac Band say the report needs to include a full accounting of the pipeline’s impacts on Indigenous cultural resources.
BLACKBURN: The state needed to do an on the ground study looking for cultural resources on each route and say how do we pick the route that affects indigenous resources the least? (:13)
There is a separate report coming that will outline Indigenous cultural resources, but tribes want that report be part of this environmental impact statement. Otherwise, they say, the P-U-C could make a decision on the pipeline route without knowing the impact on cultural sites in the area.
These petitions to reconsider the environmental impact statement were filed on May 21st. The P-U-C has until the end of June to respond.
For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend.
STORY #2 - NATIVE MED SCHOOL GRADS
May has been a month of graduations and celebrations. Earlier this month 4 Native students graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Duluth campus.
Reporter Melissa Townsend caught up with them at a celebration hosted by the University’s Center of American Indian and Minority Health.
MELISSA: Just tell me your name and introduce yourself
JOSIE: OK, I’m Josie Scala. I’m a 4th year medical student about to be a doctor - tomorrow — YEAH!! (:08)
Josie’s dad is from White Earth, but the other three graduates come from much further away.
AARON: My name is Aaron Smith. I was born in Fort Defiance on the Navajo reservation,
TYSON: I’m Tyson Birmingham, I’m from Polson, Montana which is part of the Flathead Indian reservation.
SARA: I’m Sara Roe, I’m 28 years old, originally form Antioch, California.
Sara and the others say it was the Duluth program specifically for American Indian med students that drew them here.
SARA: I just love them and they made me feel like family. (:10)
All these graduates say there have been tough times in the past 4 years.
Josie Scala took a few years off between college and medial school and she says the first year back was pretty tough. But she’s felt more at ease each year!
JOSIE: I remember in the beginning of 3rd year it’s hard to imagine that you’ll get to the point that you’ll feel confident and be ready to be on your own sort of and I earlier this year really started feeling that. Like I’m ready to be doing this. So I’m excited - still nervous, but really excited and happy. (:17)
Each of these graduates have proud families here tonight. Josie’s dad is Clarence Scala from White Earth. He says he feels blessed.
CLARENCE: She’s done a lot of hard work. I’ve always told her she can do whatever she wants to do she just needs to do the work to get there. I mean she’s not a quitter … (:16)
Dr. Mary Owen shares his pride. She is the Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for American Indian and Minority Health.
MARY: My heart is swelling for these graduates. I’m so happy for them and so thrilled for the work I know they are going to do for our communities. The physicians you saw tonight have been committed to Native people from day one. So they are such a great addition to our community. (:15)
That’s the community of Native physicians - which just got a little bit bigger. Congratulations graduates.