When the United States makes a treaty with an Indigenous nation, that treaty becomes — in the words of the Constitution itself — the supreme law of the land. Not a courtesy. Not a relic. Binding law, on equal footing with any act of Congress. Yet in 2026, two fights on opposite ends of the country are testing whether those promises still mean anything when there is oil to move and timber to cut.
What’s happening — and what’s at risk
Start in northern Wisconsin, where the Canadian energy company Enbridge has run its Line 5 oil pipeline across the reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa for more than a decade — long after its easements expired, in what a federal court called an unlawful trespass. The watershed it threatens is not abstract to the Band: it feeds the wild rice beds, fisheries, and waters that are economically vital and culturally sacred, protected by treaties the United States signed and is bound to honor. In 2023 a federal judge ordered the pipeline removed by June 16, 2026. Instead of complying, Enbridge has begun clearing land for a 41-mile reroute that would cut through hundreds of wetlands and streams just upstream — and has won a stay of the shutdown deadline while it appeals. The Band is fighting the reroute permits in court, arguing the federal review ignored the damage and shortchanged its treaty-protected resources.
Now travel some 2,000 miles northwest to the Tongass, the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth and the homeland of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples for more than 10,000 years. Since 2001, the Roadless Rule has shielded roughly nine million acres of it from industrial clear-cut logging and road-building. In 2025 the federal government moved to rescind that protection — and did so, the region’s tribes say, without the government-to-government consultation that federal law requires. The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes responded that it would not recognize the action’s legitimacy until real consultation occurred, calling it a violation of the United States’ trust responsibility to tribal nations.
Where it stands in 2026
Both fights are live right now. On Line 5, the June 2026 removal deadline still hangs over the case even as it sits stayed pending appeal before the Seventh Circuit — and notably, the federal government has stepped in on the pipeline’s side, invoking energy-security executive orders and a U.S.–Canada treaty to argue against a shutdown. A parallel battle plays out in Michigan, where the Bay Mills Indian Community and other tribes are fighting Enbridge’s proposed tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, sacred waters shared by treaty; the Michigan Supreme Court heard arguments in that case in March 2026.
On the Tongass, the Roadless Rule rescission is advancing through the federal process in 2026 — so quietly that when the Forest Service declined to hold public meetings, a regional conservation council organized its own hearings to get tribal and community testimony into the official record. All 20 federally recognized tribes of Southeast Alaska, joined by the National Congress of American Indians, have lined up in opposition. The throughline in both places is the same: decisions about Indigenous homelands, made with far too little Indigenous voice.
“It’s about energy and jobs” — and why that doesn’t hold up
Defenders of these projects argue that the country needs the energy Line 5 carries and the economic activity that logging and development bring, and that a patchwork of local objections cannot be allowed to halt national priorities. Energy reliability and rural jobs are real concerns, and Indigenous nations themselves weigh development carefully — many run their own resource economies.
But the argument sidesteps the actual issue. Treaty rights are not a “local objection” to be balanced away; they are federal law, and the government’s trust responsibility is a legal duty, not a suggestion. Bypassing consultation to fast-track a pipeline or a logging rule doesn’t streamline a process — it breaks a promise the United States made and a law it is sworn to uphold. And the stewardship record speaks for itself: the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian kept the Tongass intact for ten millennia; the Bad River Band has protected its watershed for generations. The people with the longest track record of caring for these lands are precisely the ones being cut out of the decisions. Honoring treaties isn’t an obstacle to good stewardship — it is the proven path to it.
What we’re calling for
- Enforce the federal government’s treaty and trust obligations as the binding law they are.
- Require genuine, government-to-government consultation — and free, prior, and informed consent — before any project affecting tribal lands, waters, or treaty rights moves forward.
- Shut down the Line 5 trespass and reject the reroute and Straits tunnel that threaten treaty-protected waters.
- Restore Roadless Rule protections to the Tongass and put them in a durable, tribally supported form.
- Expand co-stewardship and support the return of ancestral lands to Indigenous management.
How to help
These decisions are being made right now, and both public pressure and the official record matter:
- Submit comments when agencies open them on Line 5 and the Tongass — and say plainly that treaty rights and tribal consultation must be respected.
- Follow the lead of the affected nations — the Bad River Band, Bay Mills, and the Tlingit and Haida tribes — and amplify their calls rather than speaking over them.
- Urge your members of Congress to defend the federal trust responsibility and oppose end-runs around consultation.
- Support the tribal governments and legal organizations carrying these fights, and spread the word.
A promise is only worth as much as our willingness to keep it. Get involved with Funny not Funny and help us hold the United States to the treaties it signed.