Here’s the choice: Cheap McDonald’s fries or health of Anishinaabe village of Pine Point

“One thing I’ve learned the hard way is not to collect rain from the roof into my rain barrels. It turns pink, likely from fungicides. I won’t fish anymore in our local lake, which is half a mile from the nearest field, because of pesticide drift, or in the two rivers or creeks nearby – one where children swim – that runs through the village. I can no longer pick sage in the prairie for ceremonial purposes. Instead, I have to go deep into the last remaining wild places where R.D. Offutt doesn’t spray. I can hear them spraying from helicopters as early as 6:30 a.m.“

—Evelyn Bellanger, Anishinaabe, Pine Point village

The industrial agriculture giant, R.D. Offutt, has spent decades surrounding the Anishinaabe village of Pine Point with fields of monocrop. Now, the company is attempting to undercut tribal sovereignty by suing the White Earth Nation: on May 3, R.D. Offutt filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the Anishinaabe from regulating groundwater permits on their own reservation. R.D. Offutt asserts that their “groundwater withdrawals have not had, and will not have, a direct effect on the political security, economic security, or health and welfare of the White Earth Band.” 

We know this is false. 

The story of Pine Point starts with corporate greed. In 1889, families of the Wolf Clan, Sturgeon Clan and Bear Clan were forced out of their ancestral lands when logging companies moved in, justified and legalized by Minnesota’s own Knute Nelson. Over the decades, colonial policies have caused the village to become a poster child for Native poverty, with a consistent pattern of economic discrimination and land alienation. The opioid epidemic has hit the community hard, and the housing projects, built during LBJ’s War on Poverty, are looking rough. 

But this is, more importantly, the story of the land and water we love; this is the story of where we make our home. There are some murals that grace the buildings, a workforce development center, a local store and a number of small Native businesses, a music festival and powwow, and a great deal of village pride. Pine Point has also sent many of the most well-known Anishinaabe to academia and Native organizations, in the Twin Cities and beyond. This community — and the White Earth tribe which represents them — wants a chance at some clean water, and a little less airborne spraying over the village by big agriculture business. 

For the past thirty years, R.D. Offutt has been steadily increasing its operations on the White Earth Reservation. (They are only able to own reservation land due to a series of illegal land transfers, violating long-standing treaties. Currently the Anishinaabe have total legal control over less than 10% of the reservation, leaving it “checkerboarded.”) In 1997, R.D. Offutt was producing potatoes on 55,000 acres of land; today, the corporation grows on 190,000 acres spread over Minnesota and several other states, including North and South Dakota, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin. About 40% of the agricultural land to the east of the Pine Point village is under R.D. Offutt contract or direct ownership.

R.D. Offutt produces yields at twice this region’s average, and in 2021, it was tied for second place amongst the largest farming systems in the U.S., according to The Land Report. The company is a major supplier for McDonald’s french fries, and boasts its continual growth. Yet, this growth comes at a massive cost: nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides, and high-tech irrigation equipment are poured into the waters and the land, leaving a bad taste everywhere.

In 2019, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency conducted a study of the Straight River, which flows out of the Pine Point landscape and into the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The researchers found that nitrogen fertilizer contamination was 100 times higher than in areas not in proximity to industrial potato farming. Moreover, chlorothalonil, mancozeb, and metribuzin are used on 79%, 56%, and 68%, respectively, of all R.D. Offutt planted acres.

This problem impacts the region. In November 2023, the EPA directed three Minnesota state agencies — the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Departments of Health and Department of Natural Resources — to address the “imminent and substantial endangerment to the health” of thousands of southeast Minnesota residents exposed to high levels of nitrate contamination in their drinking water. That may be in southern Minnesota, but nitrates are in the water everywhere. 

The community of Pine Point is particularly devastated by the R.D. Offutt expansions. Each spring, a huge influx of heavy equipment drowns the prairie with toxic chemicals, which then drift into the water and homes of Pine Point residents. The county roads look like a war zone, filled with planes, helicopters, and industrial sprayers careening through the fields. Tractors resembling mutant insects crawl out into fields and the air reeks of pesticides. 

It is not a normal spring of rebirth and joy. Rather, it is more like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, where life is poisoned by chemicals. 

The White Earth Anishinaabe were once a healthy people.  There was almost no cancer in the Anishinaabe at the turn of the century. That is not the case now.  

A 2022 Minnesota Department of Health report found that during a “recent 15-year period, the total number of new cancers diagnosed in American Indian men living in the White Earth region was 60% higher than expected compared to white, non-Hispanic men in Minnesota.” These include oral cavity, pharynx, stomach, colorectal, liver and intrahepatic bile duct, lung, kidney, and renal pelvis cancers. 

As for Native women, they are diagnosed with new cancers at a rate that is 30% greater than expected. Notably, Native women have significant rates of four specific cancers: colorectal cancer, liver and intrahepatic bile duct, lung and bronchus, and kidney and renal pelvis. 

What causes those cancers? Well, many things, but consider the high nitrate levels in drinking water and exposure to airborne toxins. A 2020 Wisconsin study on nitrates in drinking water found significant increases in rates of colorectal, ovarian, thyroid, and kidney cancers among those exposed to the chemicals. 

Additionally, a 2018 Minnesota Department of Health study found that the Central Sands region “as a whole had higher rates of pesticide poisoning emergency department visits compared to the state over a ten-year period (2005 to 2014). About 30% of these pesticide poisoning ED visits occurred in young children.” 

We bury more people than are born in our village of Pine Point. This is becoming true across much of the reservation. Yet, R.D. Offut writes on its website, “as a family-owned and operated farm, [we have] grown crops alongside the White Earth Nation for more than 40 years and we consider the tribe to be an important neighbor.” 

The Anishinaabe have nowhere to go if our water is poisoned. This is the last of our lands, our reservation.

And now, it appears that R.D. Offutt is even trying to take the water itself, from our rivers, our fish, and our people. In 2021, during the deep drought, the company kept the pumps running and, in doing so, violated water withdrawal permits. Together, R.D. Offutt and other companies pumped 22 billion gallons of water — about 2.5 billion more than was used by the entire city of Minneapolis’ water treatment plant, which serves about 500,000 people. That same year, “the average R.D. Offutt permit violation allowed 43 million gallons. Those that went over, but still pumped less than 50 million gallons, wouldn’t have to pay any more than the $140 minimum.” Pretty cheap groundwater.

In May 2023, in response to these actions, the White Earth Nation passed an ordinance requiring farmers with irrigation wells within the reservation boundary or in a five-mile buffer surrounding it to apply to the White Earth Division of Natural Resources for a permit.

Not only is the company taking the groundwater, now they are trying to repress tribal ability to protect water and people by asking a federal judge to rule that the White Earth Nation has no authority to require farmers to get tribal water permits. This is the same water that the people of Pine Point drink. There is no other water. There is no other land. The people of Pine Point have continually been pushed out of their homes, by law, by logging, by poisoned waters, and now maybe by a lack of drinkable water at all. As Don Wedll, Treaty Rights historian, noted in an interview, “Offutt seems to want ‘justice’ in the court. There is no scale large enough to weigh the injustices done to the reservation.” 

As of this writing, it’s summer in the North country, and the helicopters are spraying the potato fields. The tribe has backed down on pushing the regulations, but the lawsuit and, ultimately, the question of if a tribal nation has the right to protect the very water of the people, remains. We will see how it goes between big agriculture and the tribe trying to protect its groundwater. The fish, clams, and Anishinaabe hope to have enough water to carry on.