Delaney Kelly has published ““We Stand With the Water”: Ojibwe Treaty Rights, the Walleye Wars, and the Imminent Threat of Enbridge’s Line 5” in the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law.

Here is the abstract:

Enbridge Energy’s crude oil pipeline, known as Line 5, currently poses a serious threat to the vitality of the Bad River in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes more broadly. Its construction threatens centuries old treaty rights of Ojibwe nations. Line 5 has been the subject of protest and extensive legal action over the past decade. This Note analyzes the legal claims leveraged by various Ojibwe nations against Enbridge. First, it considers the history of the Ojibwe people in the Midwest region and the treaties forged between the United States and Ojibwe leaders, which enshrined rights to hunt, fish, and gather on both reservation and ceded territory. Then, it analyzes the attempted forced removal of the Ojibwe by the federal government, despite these treaties. Next, it details early twentieth century criminalization of the exercise of the right to hunt, fish, and gather, and the legal battle to exercise those reserved rights. Then, it discusses the Walleye Wars of the late twentieth century. Finally, this Note describes how the contemporary legal battle against Enbridge’s Line 5 builds upon this legacy, arguing that the environmental threat posed by the pipeline inhibits the ability to exercise reserved treaty rights, and threatens the vitality of the land.