Pipeline protesters target bank

Carrying signs denouncing Wells Fargo bank's investments in oil and pipelines - particularly the Enbridge Energy Line 3 replacement pipeline slated to go through Carlton County - a group of about 15, mostly Native American, protestors gathered outside the Cloquet bank branch Friday afternoon.

Before the protesters gathered on the frontage road near the bank exit, bank employees locked the doors to anyone not doing business there. Many of them watched the protesters through the windows or the glass doors.

It was a largely peaceful event, although there were some verbal exchanges between protestors and bank customers pulling out of the parking lot.

A man with a bullhorn, the lower half of his face hidden by a handkerchief, repeated various messages over and over.

"Take your money out of their bank account," he said. "Go to a credit union that cares about the earth."

Other protestors waved their signs, chanted "No Line 3" or addressed individual drivers leaving the bank parking lot. The reaction was mixed.

"Get a job," hollered one customer from his truck.

One person gave a thumbs-up.

"I support oil," said another.

"Wells Fargo funds pipelines and funds man camps," yelled a protestor, pointing out the link between the "man camps" filled with pipeline workers and sex trafficking of American Indian women and girls.

A masked protester - who declined to give her name - talked to the Pine Knot News about the reasons behind the protest, the first to target the Wells Fargo bank in Cloquet.

"It sends a bigger message to protest here than in Duluth," she said. "This is the bank for the [Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa] reservation, and we no longer want to support Wells Fargo or the funding of further extreme resource extraction."

Jennifer Axtell, Wells Fargo Cloquet branch manager, declined to comment on Friday's protest. Wells Fargo branches in Duluth and Minneapolis have also been targeted by protestors.

The unnamed protest spokesperson spoke about "the very real threat to climate change, our water, the medicines that grow in our woods and our wild rice" posed by the pipelines.

"The proposed route puts at risk a lot of the things we use in everyday life: our treaty rights, our ability to hunt and gather are being threatened by this pipeline," she said.

When contacted about Friday's protest, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner stressed that the Line 3 project is about safety, noting that the new Line 3 will replace a 1960s-era pipeline with "one made of thicker steel, more advanced coatings, and state-of-the-art pipeline technology that will help protect northern Minnesota's environment."

Kellner said part of the agreement between the pipeline company and the Fond du Lac Band included maintenance work on the company's existing Line 4, which also crosses the reservation. That work will make the area more accessible for members of the Fond du Lac community "for traditional land uses, restore wetland hydrology, and better protect the environment," Kellner said.

Regarding the problems of human trafficking, Kellner said Enbridge is committed to participating in community efforts that raise awareness of human trafficking and support local educational programming.

"We recognize there are different points of view about the energy we all use," Kellner said. "Our preference is always to seek to resolve differences of opinion through dialogue - peacefully and respectfully."

Bank employees and the law enforcement evidently knew in advance that the protest was coming, as officers from the Cloquet police department drove past the protest in unmarked cars and bank employees locked the doors at 3:30 p.m., when the protest was scheduled to begin.

It started about a half-hour later, in part, protesters said, because the adjacent businesses wouldn't allow them to park in their lots.

Some of the protestors covered their faces with masks, hats or handkerchiefs, while others left their faces bare.

The unidentified tribal member said the masks were a way for people to express a "collective identity," but also a way to protect themselves, because by opposing the pipeline they are also opposing the Reservation Business Committee (RBC), which reached an agreement with Enbridge allowing the Line 3 pipeline to cross reservation land after lengthy negotiations last year.

"We feel the RBC made this decision based on money, not on what's best for us or the next seven generations," the woman said. "So there's a lot of tension between not only the reservation and Enbridge, but between the reservation community and its own governing body."