by Laina G. Stebbins
July 17, 2021
For years, Indigenous and environmental groups have been standing up against Calgary-based Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac, arguing a rupture could harm the areas’s freshwater and ecosystem. And about 200 miles west across Lake Michigan, in the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula, a similar story is unfolding.
On Friday, nearly 300 activists and tribal citizens gathered on small Stephenson Island in Wisconsin — a stone’s throw from the bridge separating it from Michigan — in a joint effort to protect the river that encircles it.
t’s no accident that the river that divides the places known today as Wisconsin and Michigan bears the same name as the Menominee Tribe. The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin lived along the Menominee River for thousands of years, and evidence of their ancestral past — including sacred sites, such as dance rings and burial mounds — still line its banks. 
