Transforming Emotions: How Indigenous and White Water Protectors Worked Together to Resist the Line 3 Tar Sands Pipeline in Northern Minnesota

Keywords: emotions, social movements, Indigenous, colonialism, climate justice
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In the summer of 2021, thousands of Indigenous and white activists gathered in Northern Minnesota to resist the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, citing concerns that the pipeline would violate treaty rights, threaten clean water, and exacerbate climate change. Through 25 in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this paper considers how activists worked together across Indigenous-settler lines to resist the pipeline. I focus on emotions, important terrains where power inequalities can be reproduced or confronted. I find that settler colonialism and white supremacy manifest in certain emotions and actions that make it difficult for white and Indigenous activists to work together. However, over time, movement norms encourage white activists to adopt emotions and behaviors deemed more useful for collaboration. Employing colonialism as a frame and deepening their sense of obligation to the more-than-human world help white activists work toward these accepted emotions and behaviors. Ultimately, this study points to how climate justice social movements, which aim to center leadership by frontline communities, can better work across power differences to confront colonialism and climate injustice. This study also enhances our understanding of the role of emotions in building social movements across difference, a topic understudied in the social movement literature.