Whitney Gravelle spent July 15, 2026, trying to clear wildfire smoke out of tribal buildings, constructing homemade air purifiers from filters and box fans, and checking on community members with asthma and heart disease. Gravelle is the president of the Bay Mills Indian Community based on the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The same day, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy approved two key permits for Enbridge, a Canadian oil and gas company, to build a tunnel for a pipeline that runs through the Straits of Mackinac, a sacred waterway for the Bay Mills community that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. If fully approved, the project would allow Enbridge to operate the tunnel and pipeline through the Straits for 99 more years.
Map by Samantha Harrington
Bay Mills Indian Community has been fighting to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline for over 15 years, alongside climate action organizations and all of Michigan’s other recognized tribes. Line 5, they argue, poses extreme risks to fragile, sacred, and economically important ecosystems. And it locks Michigan into almost another century of supporting oil and gas infrastructure, even though burning oil and gas causes climate change and the state set a goal of 100% clean energy by 2040.
