Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
The federal appeals court upheld the district court ruling that Enbridge Energy has been trespassing on the Bad River reservation and ordered the company to complete its reroute on a court-supervised timeline. WPR's coverage, sourced closest to the tribal community, leads here. The ruling is a landmark affirmation of Mashkiiziibii's sovereignty over its own land and waters, and it arrives while the Michigan Supreme Court simultaneously struck the tunnel permit downstream. Two courts, one week, and the pipeline is losing ground on both ends of the Great Lakes.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
ICT's account of the Seventh Circuit ruling fills in federal appellate context that WPR's piece (covered in Wisconsin Nations) leaves implicit. The court found Enbridge's continued operation of Line 5 across Bad River land constitutes trespass and ordered a reroute on a timeline the court will supervise. The ruling does not immediately halt the pipeline but removes any remaining legal ambiguity about Enbridge's status on tribal land. This is the ruling Bad River has been building toward since the easement expired.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
The federal appeals court this week upheld the district court's finding that Enbridge's Line 5 is trespassing on the Bad River Reservation and ordered the company to complete a reroute on a timeline the court called "reasonable." ICT's coverage frames the ruling as a clear affirmation of tribal sovereignty, though the word "reasonable" leaves Enbridge room to argue about pace. The ruling does not halt the pipeline immediately, which is why Bad River simultaneously pressed its injunction request in district court. Read this alongside candidate 175 for the full picture of where the litigation stands.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
On July 15, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy authorized Enbridge to build an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, a decision that tribal nations and NARF called a betrayal of the consultation process. Bad River and other Great Lakes tribes have argued for years that the tunnel project poses an existential threat to the waters that sustain manoomin and the fisheries protected by treaty. NARF's statement, linked here first, frames the ruling not as a conclusion but as the opening of the next legal front. The fight over whether construction can actually proceed, and on whose terms, is far from over.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
A coalition of more than 200 Great Lakes business owners is calling on Michigan regulators to reject Line 5 tunnel permits, galvanized in part by the drilling fluid spill on Bad River lands, the Wisconsin Examiner reports. The business coalition represents a broadening of the anti-tunnel alliance beyond tribal and environmental groups, which matters politically as the permit fight moves into its next phase. The spill on Mashkiiziibii lands was the catalyst: when Enbridge's equipment fouled Bad River, it handed opponents a concrete, documented harm to point to in regulatory proceedings.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
This guest opinion in Native News Online, from a tribal advocate who spent a decade in Line 5 consultation proceedings, is the most honest account this week of what tribal consultation actually looks like from the inside: not government-to-government dialogue, but a process designed to document the appearance of listening while the outcome is predetermined. The author describes sitting across from nearly every state and federal agency with authority over the project, watching the same promises broken in the same ways, and concludes that consultation as currently practiced is a legal fiction that serves the pipeline, not the tribes. The piece is worth fifteen minutes of your time not because it will surprise you, but because it names the mechanism with unusual precision, and that precision is useful for anyone writing about Line 5 for a general audience. Note that Native News Online is a source you've flagged as one to lean against, but this piece is substantive original testimony, not a press release or boilerplate, and it earns its place here on that basis.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
A federal judge this week ordered work stopped on sections of Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute in northern Wisconsin, a significant if partial legal victory for the Bad River Band. The ruling keeps the Band's federal lawsuit — which argues the reroute would cross ceded territory without tribal consent — alive and consequential while the broader case proceeds. WPR's coverage, the preferred source here, frames the legal landscape clearly without flattening the sovereignty stakes. This is the same dispute the brief tracked when Bad River asked the court to halt construction outright; the judge's partial halt is the first concrete relief the Band has won.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
A federal judge has ordered a partial stop to construction on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute through the Bad River watershed, the latest turn in a legal fight that Mashkiiziibii has been waging to protect its manoomin beds and treaty-protected waters. The ruling does not halt all work, and the legal landscape remains unsettled, but it is the kind of concrete, court-ordered pause the Band has been pressing for. We tracked Bad River's original motion to stop reroute construction in an earlier issue; this is the follow-on. Watch WPR for updates as the injunction scope becomes clearer.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion asking the court to extend the partial halt into a full construction stop, arguing that any reroute work through the ceded territory threatens treaty-protected resources and the Band's sovereign interests. The motion follows the partial injunction and signals that Mashkiiziibii is not settling for half measures. This is the piece to pair with the partial-halt ruling above.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion in federal court this week seeking to halt construction on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through Ashland and Iron counties, arguing the project should not proceed while the tribe's underlying easement lawsuit remains unresolved. WPR's Native American coverage has the story, though the tribal filing itself is the document worth tracking down. This is the central legal front in a fight that has defined Bad River's public life for years, and the motion signals the band is not prepared to let construction create facts on the ground while the courts deliberate.
Background
· 2024
· bad-river-film
Mary Mazzio's documentary Bad River opened in March 2024, narrated by Quannah ChasingHorse and Edward Norton and produced by Grant Hill and Allison Abner. The film chronicles the Bad River Band's fight against Enbridge Line 5 inside the longer arc of settler colonialism, the Catholic church's boarding school role, and corporate land use. It won the Environmental Media Association's Best Documentary and earned three Critics' Choice nominations.
Background
· 2023
· midwest-environmental-justice-network
On June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Bad River reservation by June 2026 and to pay the Band $5.1 million for nine years of trespass, with continuing quarterly payments. The court found the pipeline a 'public nuisance' carrying an imminent threat of rupture that could contaminate the Band's drinking water and the manoomin sloughs. It was the first U.S. court order to shut down a major operating oil pipeline on tribal land.