Great Lakes, local consequences: Indigenous voices on why Line 5 matters in Kalamazoo

Editor’s Note: Planet Z: Voices of Youth for a Sustainable Future is a Gen Z–created series sharing unfiltered perspectives on climate change — from eco-anxiety and grief to the urgency, creativity, and resolve shaping their generation. Support for this series is provided by Consumers Energy. The artwork for this piece was created by Aanjé K. Greymountain an Indigenous artist and Western Michigan University student. Please see her bio note and Artist Statement below.

KALAMAZOO, MI — In lecture halls, around kitchen tables, and across backyards fences in Southwest Michigan, conversations about an oil pipeline over 250 miles away are surprisingly common. 

For Deanna Bush, a Western Michigan University faculty specialist in Music Therapy, and a member of an Indigenous community, Line 5 isn’t just infrastructure — it’s a threat to the ecosystems, wildlife, and the deep Indigenous connection to the land. What happens in the Straits of Mackinac, she says, is all part of the earthly and spiritual cycles that impact us all. 

Bush seeks to bring these considerations to her local community through events such as an “Earth Echoes” music performance that was held in March, and an April 22nd Earth Day art show, “Healing Mother Earth,” at WMU featuring Indigenous students and artists interpreting what sustainability means from both Western and Indigenous perspectives and sponsored by WMU’s Native American Student Organization (NASO).

“Reciprocity is huge in Indigenous culture; we don’t believe in taking and taking,” says Bush. “If we take, we need to give back.” 

Convergence in the Straits

That cultural conflict is at the heart of a lawsuit being considered now by the Michigan Supreme Court. The Little Traverse Bay Bands sought to stop the encasement of part of an oil pipeline across the Straits of Mackinac. On Wednesday, March 11, the Michigan Supreme Court held oral arguments in the Line 5 tunnel project cases, for Little Traverse Bay Bands v Michigan Public Commission (MPSC)  and For Love of Water v MPSC.multiples one of multudecide (FIX) whether to uphold the Line 5 projects are under further review. The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision later in 2026. 

“Ever since I was young, we were taught that water is part of what gives life and takes life…It is sacred, and therefore, we as Indigenous people must protect and stand up for water rights.”  — Shabanaa Bush, WMU Student and citizen of the Gun Lake Tribe of Potawatomi

The controversial Line 5, a 45-mile-long oil pipeline, stretching from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Canada, transports over 22 million gallons of light crude oil and natural gas liquids per day. Specifically, Bush and other Indigenous people in Michigan, Jordan Morseau, and Deanna Bush are focused on a critical segment of Line 5 that is across the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron converge. 

Shabanaa Bush is a junior at Western Michigan University studying aerospace engineering. She’s a member of WMU’s NASO and a citizen of the Gun Lake Tribe of Potawatomi. Her life and her day-to-day existence are in Kalamazoo, but her mind and heart are occupied by an oil pipeline hundreds of miles away.

“A lot of non-natives see the land as a piece of land that they can own, whereas we, as indigenous people, know that the land is never ours,” says Bush. “Ever since I was young, we were taught that water is part of what gives life and takes life…It is sacred, and therefore, we as Indigenous people must protect and stand up for water rights.” 

Enbridge Incorporated has owned and operated the pipeline since 1953, and has proposed construction of a 21-foot wide concrete tunnel under the Straits to encase the pipeline because of notable cracking and corrosion in the existing line. This wear and tear increases the risk of an oil spill in this region due to erosion beginning to expose the pipeline; in 1963, the river was 320 feet from the pipeline. Today, it is 28 feet away, and the rate of erosion is further increasing due to the effects of climate change, according to a 2024 report from the Wisconsin Sierra Club. (LINK) 

Line 5 transports over 22 million gallons of light crude oil and natural gas liquids per day, which is then turned into propane for use in the state or processed in oil refineries to heat homes, fuel vehicles, and power industry, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. In its 73-year lifetime, the pipeline has leaked over 30 times and spilled more than an estimated 1 million gallons of oil into the Great Lakes, according to National Wildlife Federation pipeline safety specialist Beth Wallace.

Line 5, as it exists and its proposed purposes, poses a unique risk to Indigenous Anishinaabe communities in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to 32 Tribal Nations and tribal organizations with the Native American Rights Fund. Twelve miles of Line 5 run through the Bad River Band’s territory, located along the shores of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin, and the tribe says that the line threatens local ecosystem health and puts their natural resources in jeopardy. 

Since 2013, the Bad River Band of Wisconsin has been seeking to remove the pipeline from its land.  

Proponents of the new construction argue that the shutdown of Line 5 would cause shortages, lost jobs, and increased prices of oil and natural gas. Additionally, the shutdown would create shortages of transportation fuel. Critics argue this is fear-mongering and that there are alternatives for delivery. 

The Trump Administration announced a national energy emergency in January of 2025; one component of this order was encouraging the Army Corps of Engineers to speed up the environmental impact assessment of the proposed construction of the Line 5 tunnel. The pipeline has already been found to pose a high risk to the wildlife and waters by organizations such as the National Wildlife Federation, but experts like Wallace and Brian O’Mara, a geological engineer, warn that the new tunnel’s construction would raise these risks substantially. The tunnel would have air in it to allow for servicing, which causes a high risk of explosion if any natural gas or oil fumes leak into the enclosed space.

Additionally, the plans have raised concerns about the permeation of bedrock on the lake’s floor. It is a concern to experts who have reviewed the plans that construction of a tunnel through porous rock is a concept still in the experimental stage of development, and many argue that the risk assessment plan by Enbridge was incomplete and inadequate for a construction project of this nature. 

“These are indigenous ways of knowing and learning. To not deplete — it is in our bones… It is important to understand that we are not just denying this for today, but also forward-thinking for the next seven generations. This pipeline will be here for another 200 years. We do not want to corrupt the future.” — Jordan Morseau, WMU student and president of NASO

One 2016 study from the University of Michigan found that a Line 5 rupture could damage more than 700 miles of shoreline in Lake Huron and Michigan. A 2017 study from Michigan State University found that the economic damage of a Great Lakes oil spill would be roughly 5.5 billion dollars. 

“It’s not a long-term solution; we will have to fix this again in another 10 to 15 years. It costs the least amount of money for the highest level of profit. Indigenous engineers would be long-term, to make it last as long as we can. Cost is one thing, but making it last long term is another,” says Bush. 

Since 2013, the Bad River Band of Wisconsin has been seeking to remove the pipeline from its land.  The Bad River Band hired an independent consulting agency to study alternative routes for gas and oil delivery. The agency, PLG Consulting, found that the majority of oil that is now supplied by the market will be sourced from other sources within three months. The remaining quantity would be replaced within 18 months, from other pipelines, railroads, and waterborne transport from the Gulf of Mexico around to Montreal, which was the route of most of the supply prior to 2015. Indigenous communities are at the forefront of the fight against Line 5. 

One 2016 study from the University of Michigan found that a Line 5 rupture could damage more than 700 miles of shoreline in Lake Huron and Michigan. A 2017 study from Michigan State University found that the economic damage of a Great Lakes oil spill would be roughly 5.5 billion dollars. 

Not only does Line 5 and its expansion impact the Indigenous communities directly adjacent to the site of its construction, but it also has a rippling effect on the entirety of the Great Lakes Watershed. 

Impacts on Kalamazoo watershed and beyond

The Gun Lake Tribe has its own environmental team. “We think about how to sustain and protect, reinvigorate the life we already have,” says Bush. “We try to do as much as we can in a modern sense to show data of Line 5 having effects on the Kalamazoo watershed, the Muskegon River, and the Grand River…We have seen the impacts of intense pollution in the watershed. We see a decline in viable [native] ricebeds and soil, and the situation will be the same up north and trickle down to Southwest Michigan as well.”

Jordan Morseau,  a public policy student at Western Michigan University and president of NASO, is also active in advocating against the Line 5 tunnel. 

“Reciprocity is crucial. Whenever we harvest, there is a give-and-take which is not seen in mainstream attitudes,” says Morseau. “In land development now, everything is linear, whereas in Indigenous societies, there is a symbiotic and cyclical relationship. We are all in this together.” 

Morseau emphasized this idea with an anecdote about traditional Anishinabe wigwams. When built, Native people purposely only use saplings for their pliability, but also so as not to disturb mature and healthy trees. Additionally, they use Birch bark over the frame, because it peels annually.

“These are indigenous ways of knowing and learning. To not deplete — it is in our bones…” says Morseau.  “It is important to understand that we are not just denying this for today, but also forward-thinking for the next seven generations. This pipeline will be here for another 200 years. We do not want to corrupt the future.” 

Both students (NAME) emphasize the role of local tribes in gathering data and constructing arguments against Line 5, but through a lens of Indigeneity. “We call it ‘two-eyed seeing.’ By incorporating indigenous science into the Western way, we are always walking in two worlds, and balancing the bets of each,” says Morseau. 

Bush gets hope from previous battles fought and won by Indigenous peoples, such as the protection of local food sources. She can collaborate with them [Department of Natural Resources], doing stream research and hatching for our sturgeon, a population that used to be endangered, but their numbers have started to return,” she says. 

Gun Lake released 125 lake sturgeon in September of last year, supporting the population and allowing the Tribe to maintain its relationship with historic food resources. 

Morseau says that there are financial constraints for Indigenous communities’ ability to fight large companies, such as Enbridge. “Each tribal nation can lobby the state governments. We have so much passion that despite there not being the same financial backing as Enbridge, we have the heart and inner power.”

In the end, the conflict over Line 5 is not only a legal battle over infrastructure and energy — it is a clash between fundamentally different understandings of water, and life, itself, says Bush.  

“…Ever since I was young, we were taught that water is part of what gives life and takes life…It is sacred, and therefore, we as Indigenous people must protect and stand up for water rights.”

About the Artist: Aanjé K. Greymountain is an Indigenous artist currently seeking a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on Metal Smithing at Western Michigan University.  Her mother is Ojibwe, and her father is Diné.  Her artwork centers around Native culture and identity, and passing down ancestral knowledge through art. 

Artist’s Statement: “The piece included in the story symbolizes the control and resistance of indigenous people. The slew of headlines each depicts a different struggle, all impacting native people. The figure bound in chains shows the control imposed over native lands and bodies for resources and profit, being governed and impacted without their consent.”