Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion in federal court this week seeking to halt construction on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through Ashland and Iron counties, arguing the project should not proceed while the tribe's underlying easement lawsuit remains unresolved. WPR's Native American coverage has the story, though the tribal filing itself is the document worth tracking down. This is the central legal front in a fight that has defined Bad River's public life for years, and the motion signals the band is not prepared to let construction create facts on the ground while the courts deliberate.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Ashland County approved an agreement this week that would provide county reimbursement for law enforcement costs associated with policing protests of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute project. WPR reported the development without specifying who funds the reimbursement, which is the question worth pressing. The arrangement has a familiar and troubling shape: public safety resources aligned with a private pipeline company's construction timeline, in the homeland of the very tribe whose treaty rights are at the center of the dispute.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR's explainer this week lays out the procedural terrain for Bad River's emergency motion to stop Enbridge construction, walking through the Bayfield County court proceedings and the federal case running in parallel. It is a useful primer, though it would be stronger with more direct tribal voice. The core tension the piece surfaces is real: construction is advancing on the ground while the legal question of whether the reroute can proceed at all remains genuinely open.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
High Country News reports that a 234-mile gas pipeline across Navajo Nation land is moving toward construction after a hearing that community members say they were not adequately notified about. The story echoes Line 5 in its structure: a pipeline company, a federal permitting process, and a tribal community whose consultation rights appear to have been honored in form but not in substance. For the Ice Worlds frame, the Navajo Nation's water and land relationships are as central to its future as manoomin is to the Anishinaabe.
Background
· 2024
· bad-river-film
Mary Mazzio's documentary Bad River opened in March 2024, narrated by Quannah ChasingHorse and Edward Norton and produced by Grant Hill and Allison Abner. The film chronicles the Bad River Band's fight against Enbridge Line 5 inside the longer arc of settler colonialism, the Catholic church's boarding school role, and corporate land use. It won the Environmental Media Association's Best Documentary and earned three Critics' Choice nominations.
Background
· 2023
· midwest-environmental-justice-network
On June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Bad River reservation by June 2026 and to pay the Band $5.1 million for nine years of trespass, with continuing quarterly payments. The court found the pipeline a 'public nuisance' carrying an imminent threat of rupture that could contaminate the Band's drinking water and the manoomin sloughs. It was the first U.S. court order to shut down a major operating oil pipeline on tribal land.
Background
· 2013
· oil-and-water-dont-mix
In June 2013 the Bad River Tribal Council voted against renewing the 20-year easements that had allowed Enbridge's Line 5 to cross 12 allotment parcels on the reservation. The decision came three years after Enbridge's Line 6B ruptured into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, dumping more than 843,000 gallons of crude. That no vote became the foundation of every Line 5 ruling that followed.