Charges dismissed for three Line 3 protestors

Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – Opponents of the Line 3 oil pipeline are celebrating an Aitkin County judge’s decision last Thursday to dismiss charges against three Native women related to a 2021 protest.

Activists Winona LaDuke, Tania Aubid and Dawn Goodwin helped lead rallies as Enbridge began work on a new oil pipeline across northern Minnesota more than two years ago.

The charges against them stemmed from a rally on Jan. 9, 2021, when a large group gathered at a pipeline construction site near the Mississippi River in Aitkin County. 

Some group members later moved to another Aitkin County location, where they walked along U.S. Highway 169 and refused to leave a Line 3 construction site.

LaDuke, Goodwin and Aubid were not arrested on Jan. 9. Authorities charged them weeks later by summons after identifying them in social media posts. They faced gross misdemeanor charges of trespassing and harassment, as well as misdemeanor unlawful assembly and public nuisance.

A jury trial was scheduled to begin this week. But in a forceful opinion filed Sept. 14, District Court Judge Leslie Metzen dismissed all the charges.

Metzen’s order noted the government’s historical mistreatment of Indigenous people.

She wrote: “In the last 20 years I have come to a broader understanding of what we, the now dominant culture, did to try to eradicate our indigenous neighbors. We moved them by force and power and violence off the land where they lived for thousands of years. To make peace, we signed treaties with them that promised many things they never received.”

Metzen also wrote that she finds it “within the furtherance of justice” to protect the defendants who were peacefully protesting to protect the land addressed in those treaties.

More than 900 people were arrested in connection with protests over the Line 3 pipeline. Many of those charges have been dismissed or settled. Fewer than 20 of those cases are still pending.