Chemical Valley and the Origins of Indigenous Resistance to Line 5

by Alma Dukovic | Jun 22, 2023 | 8 comments

[Note: this essay is part of a series of six essays on How to Know about Line 5. You can read the series introduction and find links to the other essays as they are posted here.]

In 1952, Sarnia, Ontario began to undergo what a Detroit Free Press staff writer, James Pooler, dubbed a “Blue Water Boom”: an $80,000,000 expansion of Sarnia’s petrochemical industry (known as “Chemical Valley”), born out of the area’s production of synthetic rubber during World War II. Imperial Oil, a refining company historically and presently reliant on Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, shared in $15,000,000 worth of this expansion. Dr. J. L. Huggett, the superintendent of Imperial Oil at the time, boasted that oil would produce 752 different products.

News reports of the petrochemical industry expansion also promoted a narrative about “prospering Indians” who sold parts of their reservation near Sarnia to the expanding petrochemical industry. In fact, Pooler concludes one of his reports on Sarnia’s Chemical Valley with: “Today the Indian is being chased right off the reservation by expanding industry. And you should be chased off your land by that kind of money!”

Accounts like these attempt to situate the Indigenous community as fortunate to have the petrochemical industry’s expansion near and into their territory. But the overt reality is that the refinery expansions dispossessed the “prospering Indians” near Sarnia — the Aamjiwnaang First Nation — of their land. It was ongoing colonialism. This dispossession can be seen, in part, in the First Nation’s resistance to the 1953 construction of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, which terminates in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley.

In July of 1953, Canada’s ministry approved a right-of-way over the Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s reserve near Sarnia. In the order, the ministry required that the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company (the precursor to Enbridge) compensate the First Nation, since Line 5 crosses their territory. Just months prior, Interprovincial had received pushback from the Aamjiwnaang community, who refused to let the pipeline cross the proposed section of their land and suggested that the company construct the line along an alternative route. The First Nation’s primary objection to the pipeline’s construction through their reserve was that the area requested was “the most valuable they have left.” The Star’s Sarnia Bureau claimed that the First Nation’s Council “foresaw the day when the reserve might become simply a network of pipe lines buried four feet under the sod and useless on the surface.”

After the reserve was pressed to accept some form of compensation, the First Nation suggested that the company rent that section of their territory annually, rather than obtain an easement. Interprovincial ultimately rejected Aamjiwnaang’s proposal, but did consider and adopt a new route. The original proposal would have had the pipeline nearly cut through the center of the First Nation’s reserve. The new route no longer cut through the reserve’s center, but still crossed LaSalle and Churchill roads, which the Aamjiwnaang community claimed as part of their reserve. In the order, Canada’s Minister of Transport acknowledged that the Aamjiwnaang’s Chief and Council were opposed to the government’s granting of the right-of-way through their territory. The government acknowledged the First Nation’s ownership over at least a section of LaSalle street.

The First Nation responded to the order by continuing to resist Line 5’s encroachment. They cited Treaty 29 (1827) to assert that their reserve is not a part of Canada; hence, they argued, the Canadian federal government did not have the right to grant the right-of-way decision, as the pipeline would trespass their territory. They even threatened to take the issue up to the United Nations.

At the time, Interprovincial began laying the pipeline in the areas permitted by the order.  As a result of the forced easement, the First Nation eventually appealed to the county court for compensation. Judge E. A. Shaunessy — the judge who oversaw the case — demanded that the Aamjiwnaang community provide proof of ownership over all or a part of LaSalle street. This demand was given despite the fact that the Canadian federal government had already acknowledged this ownership when the ministry provided Interprovincial with the right-of-way order. Interprovincial then provided the court with documentation that indicated the area was located outside of the reserve; in turn, Shaunessy didn’t hold the company accountable for any compensation to the First Nation, as was initially required by the federal government’s right-of-way order.

But what if Shaunessy was given proof that the Aamjiwnaang First Nation owned that section of LaSalle street? Would the outcome have been any different? The current dispute over Enbridge’s Line 5 trespass across the Bad River Band’s territory seems to provide an answer to that question. Despite concluding that Line 5 has been trespassing on the tribe’s territory since 2013, U.S. District Judge William M. Conley has not met the Band’s demand for the pipeline’s immediate shutdown. Conley recently issued an order for Enbridge to compensate the tribe with roughly $5.15 million (a shamefully paltry sum), and to either shut down or reroute that section of the pipeline by 2026. Enbridge is already planning to appeal the ruling, arguing that the company is not trespassing on tribal territory and that the order does not provide enough time for a reroute. More importantly, the Bad River Band had already stated that they have no interest in being compensated in place of Line 5’s immediate shutdown, or in its reroute. A spill along the pipeline’s current and alternative routes poses a threat to their cultural practices and ways of life — rights they have guaranteed to them by Treaties from 1837 and 1842. Conley’s decision parallels the Canadian federal government’s initial approach to the 1953 dispute over LaSalle street; both assumed authority over Indigenous land even when territorial boundaries are (or seem) clearly defined.

And here’s what that makes clear: decisions made by legal systems and federal governments with regard to pipeline operators, like Enbridge, seem to supersede the authority of Indigenous groups over their own territories. If the territory in question is found to be outside of an Indigenous reserve, then this fact can be used to allow pipeline operators to continue their construction and/or operation of a pipeline. If a pipeline is found to trespass Indigenous territory, then the pipeline operator will merely have to negotiate terms with the impacted tribe; terms which ultimately allow, in the given moment, the ongoing operation of Line 5.

I don’t mean to ignore the difficult position that Conley has been placed in, notably given the Canadian federal government’s invocation of the 1977 Pipeline Transit Treaty with the United States. But if a clear, distinct trespass of the pipeline on Indigenous territory is not enough precedent to force the immediate shutdown of Line 5, then how will the U.S. and Canadian governments and their legal systems ever come to adequately consider the human and ecological consequences of constructing and operating many of these pipelines in the first place? Moreover, how will the U.S. and Canada ever begin to repair their long histories of dispossession and injustice?

What has, for instance, become of Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, that was so heavily boasted of by some in the mid-twentieth century? For the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, Chemical Valley dangerously exposes their 900 community members to toxic pollutants. Average benzene levels near the reserve reached 32 micrograms per cubic meter in March of 2023, while Ontario’s Ambient Air Quality Criteria (AAQC) sets its maximum at 2.3 micrograms per cubic meter over a 24-hour period of exposure and 0.45 annually. In the same month, sulphur dioxide reached an average of 147 parts per billion within one hour near their reserve, while Ontario’s AAQC sets its maximum at 40 parts per billion within one hour of exposure. This criteria is set by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks; and while it’s not used to regulate chemical emissions in Canada, it provides guidelines for the maximum rates of various contaminants that humans can be exposed to before the contaminants have an impact on human health. Moreover, these measurements do not consider the impact of exposure to several of these contaminants at the same time. The Aamjiwnaang First Nation cites a large number of health complications among their members, including increased rates of asthma, skin rashes, headaches, and cancer. In the early 2000’s, the First Nation also had their fears confirmed regarding a continual decline in their community’s overall rate of male births, which had dwindled down to a one to two ratio of male to female births.

While it’s crucial to recognize the demarcations of Indigenous territories when considering the shutdown of Line 5, pollution is not contained outside of their boundaries — and this is perhaps most evidently seen in the Aamjiwnaang reserve near Sarnia. The Red River Métis/Michif scholar Dr. Max Liboiron goes as far as to say that pollution itself is colonialism because colonialism is first and foremost about accessing Indigenous land, not just its settlement: “[Colonialism] can mean using Land as a Resource, a practice that may generate pollution through pipelines, landfills, and recycling plants, or as a sink to store or process waste” (10). Even assimilative capacity — the scientific theory adopted by state and federal environmental regulations to establish thresholds for pollution — assumes an entitlement to Indigenous land by enabling pollution that their bodies and territories have to absorb. Pollution entails land transformation and dispossession. It often produces the end results of settler colonialism, albeit through a different colonial form.

While covering the 1953 dispute between the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and Interprovincial, The Star’s Sarnia Bureau’s Charlie Whipp chillingly captures the relationship between Sarnia’s expanding petrochemical industry and colonialism: “It may well be that the 4,000 acres nestling right in Sarnia is under the same ownership it had when Christopher Columbus landed . . .  So right here in this city we may have the last remaining unconquered Indians. At that time, their reserve comprised some 10,280 acres. Today there are about 4,000 left.” In the twenty-first century, Aamjiwnaang’s reserve measures at roughly 3,100 acres; and its 3,100 acres are surrounded and polluted by Sarnia’s Chemical Valley. The Aamjiwnaang First Nation continues to resist toxic pollution to their land, air, water, and on-reserve members today.

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At the 2023 Michigan Climate Summit held earlier this month at Oakland University, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed argued that the face of the climate crisis should not be the threat it poses to polar bears or other charismatic megafauna, but the threat polluting industries pose to human lives. He pointed to the fact that children in Detroit breathe toxic air daily because of the lack of industry regulations and ongoing environmental racism. We might think about Detroit’s Marathon Oil refinery and the Detroit communities forced to deal with its pollution. We should also think about Sarnia’s Chemical Valley and the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

When Governor Gretchen Whitmer revoked Enbridge’s Line 5 easement in 2020, the Michigan government acknowledged Indigenous treaty rights for the first time in Line 5’s history. If we look at the Line 5 battle as a microcosm of the climate crisis, then the Straits of Mackinac and the broader span of the Great Lakes are — and have been for a long time — the movement’s “polar bears.”