Minnesota utility regulators voted to grant a permit allowing the Magellan pipeline to reopen near Pipestone National Monument, a decision that drew objections from tribal members who packed a hearing room and an overflow room in St. Paul. Public Utilities Commission members voted 4-1 to grant the permit, with Commissioner Audrey Partridge casting the lone vote against it.
The vote, reported by MPR News, caps years of regulatory back-and-forth over a pipeline that cuts diagonally across land near the monument. The Magellan pipeline is a gas line owned by Oklahoma-based ONEOK that once pumped gas between Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Marshall, Minnesota, as part of a larger network that ran between Texas and Minnesota. Partridge said the proposed routes are too close to the monument, according to the same report.
More than a dozen tribal leaders urged the commission to deny the permit, arguing it would endanger the surrounding ecosystem. Kelly Applegate said pipestone is a sacred resource to the world, per the MPR News account. Pipestone itself is a soft, reddish-brown stone also known as catlinite, long quarried by Indigenous people for ceremonial pipes and artworks.
A Monument With a Long and Contested History
Pipestone National Monument, created by the United States Congress in 1937 and administered by the National Park Service, covers more than 300 acres consisting of pipestone pits surrounded by tall grass prairie. The pipeline operated through the monument for 75 years and should be moved outside the area, Kevin Pranis said, according to MPR News. Before the hearing, the Indigenous Protector Movement held a prayer circle outside the hearing room and posted online that pipestone is sacred and has been sacred for generations before Minnesota, pipelines, and corporations, per a Facebook post cited in the report…