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PALISADE, MINN. – Drumming and singing rose from the snowy banks of the Mississippi River on Wednesday morning while heavy machinery beeped and revved in the distance. A dozen protesters prayed by the river as the state s largest construction project, the $2.6 billion Enbridge oil pipeline, continued its early stages in rural Aitkin County. I ll be a great-grandmother soon, so that is what I m standing for for those generations that are coming, said Tania Aubid, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a local resident who carried a bullhorn and chiding pipeline workers for being there.
Aubid s voice carried through the trees and under the power lines near where the pipeline a replacement for Enbridge s aging and deteriorating Line 3 is being constructed as workers carried on, their vests and equipment spread out and visible to the horizon west of the river.