Every August, the shallow waters of northern Wisconsin come alive with wild rice — manoomin in Ojibwe — stalks stretching 10 feet tall. For generations, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has harvested these seeds by hand, knocking them loose into boats in a practice that's woven into both survival and culture. Now that tradition faces a threat from an unexpected direction: a rerouted oil pipeline that would cut directly through their harvesting grounds.
The Bad River Band filed suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this year to block Enbridge's plan to extend its Line 5 pipeline through 41 miles of northern Wisconsin, crossing at least 70 waterways in the process. The Canadian oil transport company wants to reroute the line through areas that flow onto the Bad River Reservation — a move the tribe argues would put their watershed, their fishery, and their rice at risk.
The concern isn't theoretical. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured near the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, spilling over a million gallons of crude oil into the waterway. Last year, the same company reported roughly 69,000 gallons leaked near a rural Wisconsin town. For a community that depends on water quality for food security, those aren't distant statistics.
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Line 5 has been operating for more than seven decades, but its history on tribal lands reveals a pattern the Bad River Band is determined to break. In the 1950s, Enbridge laid 12 miles of pipeline across the 124,655-acre reservation without consulting the tribe. No negotiation. No discussion about siting or risk. The company simply built.
That changed in 2019 when the Bad River Band sued Enbridge directly, demanding the pipeline be removed. In 2023, a federal judge agreed, ruling the company had trespassed and ordering them to take their infrastructure out within three years. They also owed the tribe $5.1 million.
Now Enbridge wants to expand — and the Bad River Band is fighting again, this time at a different regulatory level.
The shortcut that matters
Here's where the legal strategy gets important: the Army Corps of Engineers chose to conduct an environmental assessment of the proposed route rather than a full environmental impact study. The difference sounds technical but carries real weight. An assessment moves faster. An impact study takes longer, requires more resources, and — crucially — demands deeper evaluation of effects on tribal nations and treaty rights.
Gussie Lord, an Oneida Nation attorney representing the Bad River Band at Earthjustice, calls this an uphill battle. But she frames it differently than a legal fight: as a responsibility to future generations. "We need people who are going to be thinking about what makes sense for the future," she said, "not just 10 years from now, but 50 years, 100 years from now."
That's the real stakes. Not just one pipeline or one season of rice, but whether a community gets to decide what happens to the waters that have sustained them for centuries.
