The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Thursday approved a developer’s proposal to build a petroleum pipeline that skirts Pipestone National Monument in southwestern Minnesota.
The 4-1 vote follows a years-long battle to renew a permit for a pipeline from Marshall, Minnesota, to Sioux Falls, S.D. The original line, which ran through the monument itself, was shut down in 2022 when the Department of Interior refused to renew its right-of-way permit.
Native Americans from 23 tribes have cultural ties to Pipestone, where a rare soft stone called catlinite is harvested.
Magellan Midstream Partners applied to open a new pipeline that would circumvent the monument in 2023, and won approval from the PUC in 2024. But backlash from tribal nations prompted the commission to rescind its decision in 2025 and order additional cultural and archaeological surveys. That work is scheduled to begin in April.
Following Thursday’s PUC approval, Magellan will be required to coordinate those surveys with tribal nations in what the commission described as a “reset” from a previously contentious relationship between both sides. But tribal representatives at the hearing say those promises ring hollow.
“Are we going to go back to the tribes sitting at the table and come up with the appropriate methodology we can all agree on going forward?” Franky Jackson, a compliance officer from the Prairie Island Indian Community, asked at Thursday’s hearing. “Or are we going to allow the applicant [Magellan] to set those standards for us?”
Survey concerns
Following the January 2025 rejection of the rerouted pipeline, the PUC ordered Magellan to conduct additional archaeological, cultural, and historical resource inventories of two proposed reroutes in conjunction with several tribes and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC). Magellan was also required to coordinate its contractor selection for the surveys with MIAC and the tribes.
That coordination has since become a key point of contention. In April 2025, Magellan selected its preferred vendor, Burns & McDonnell, which contracted with Chronicle Heritage without prior approval from MIAC of the tribes. In filings to the PUC, the company said that MIAC requested too much time to develop a criteria to select an archaeological surveyor and opted to move forward with its own contractor.
Chronicle Heritage’s survey methods have also been called into question by tribes and state agencies. In a letter to the PUC in June, a representative from the Lower Sioux Indian Community said specialists observed surveys and raised concerns over survey methodology. The filing also expressed concern that surveys were rushed and did not sufficiently document artifacts.
Across both routes, over 40 acres remain unsurveyed.
The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) likewise expressed concerns over survey methods. Chronicle Heritage identified 61 total artifact sites in its surveys and recommended three as potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. In a letter to the PUC in May, however, SHPO disputed Chronicle’s evaluation methods and said eligibility remained unresolved for 58 sites.
Magellan’s parent company, Oneok, said in a statement that the proposed workspace was modified to avoid all but two of the identified resources. It also stated that the survey followed protocol.
In a statement to Sahan Journal, SHPO said the survey did not meet its required standards and the company’s reliance on core testing alone could prevent it from identifying deep-lying archaeological sites.
Cultural engagement
Tribes have expressed concerns with other aspects of Magellan’s survey protocol.
The PUC’s February 2025 order required Magellan to complete Phase I cultural, archaeological and historical inventories in coordination with tribal nations and MIAC. But in filings to the PUC, MIAC, tribes and advocacy organizations expressed doubts that Magellan had fulfilled its cultural surveying requirements.
In its June letter to the PUC, the Lower Sioux Indian Community said its tribal specialists did not share cultural information with Chronicle Heritage and merely observed archaeological surveys. MIAC also recommended a second survey with a coordinated cultural resource plan that fully accounted for Indigenous gathering areas and ceremonial places, in addition to artifact sites.
During Thursday’s hearing, multiple representatives from tribes across Minnesota criticized survey methods and said tribes were not sufficiently consulted. Upper Sioux Tribal Historic Preservation Office officer Samantha Odegard was among those who singled out the cultural survey in particular, saying Magellan did not meet the standards established by the February 2025 order.
“There was no cultural inventory,” she told the commission.
In a statement to Sahan Journal, Oneok said that Magellan had satisfied the requirements of the PUC’s order and engaged with tribal nations.
“Magellan has completed extensive cultural and archaeological field surveys for both route alternatives identified by the Commission,” the statement read. “The work included multiple field mobilizations, pedestrian surveys and shovel testing, with 19 Tribal Cultural Specialists from six Tribal Nations participating alongside archaeological professionals.”
As of Thursday’s PUC meeting, Magellan had not submitted a separate cultural inventory.
According to Mark Tilsen, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, Magellan’s engagement with tribal nations has felt insincere.
“Tribes are not subjects that can simply be asked to comment on the destruction of our sacred sites,” Tilsen said. “[They] need to be fully considered.”
Fighting for a sacred space
The Pipestone quarries have been a gathering place for Indigenous groups for generations, with archaeological evidence of over 3,000 years of human activity present at the site.
Today, Pipestone National Monument is officially affiliated with 23 different tribal nations and Indigenous groups who still come to the quarry to harvest the site’s catlinite, or pipestone, which is used for ceremonial pipe making. Pipestone National Monument’s deposits are the world’s only recognized source of catlinite.
The sacredness of the landscape around Pipestone for tribal nations has raised questions from many activists and tribes about why a pipeline project is needed there in the first place.
“This is the only place on Turtle Island and the entire Earth that exists like this,” said Rachel Dionne-Thunder, CEO of the Indigenous Protector Movement. “Of all the places to build a pipeline, why does it have to be here?”
Concerns over the project’s potential impacts in Minnesota were exacerbated this summer when a truck rollover ruptured Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin, releasing more than 1.3 million gallons of liquid natural gas. Dionne-Thunder said the leak reaffirmed the importance of resisting the pipeline project in Pipestone.
“All of these land defense issues are connected,” she said.
Tilsen likewise pointed to the Enbridge Line 5 leak as evidence of the risk posed to Pipestone and expressed concern about the overall environmental impacts of the project. He said that the pipeline directly contradicts Minnesota’s climate change goals as well.
“In no way, shape, or form does a reroute alleviate any concerns,” he said.
In the hearing room
Tribal members and protestors gathered in a prayer ceremony outside the Ramsey County Government Center on Thursday morning before the PUC hearing. The meeting was largely closed to the public, with attendance primarily limited to speakers and media due to a security threat, commissioners said. About 150 members of the public watched from overflow seating outside of the main hearing room.
The restrictions left many protestors dismayed with what they felt was a lack of accountability from the PUC to justify commissioners’ decisions to tribal nations.
In the hearing, Magellan’s attorney Christy Brusven defended the company’s surveying and tribal engagement and touted the benefits of the pipeline to Minnesota. Tribal groups, however, criticized Magellan’s methods, highlighted the irreversible risk to the landscape and said they were not properly consulted.
“We’ve been denied meaningful cooperation because of lack of recognition of our scientific and cultural knowledge,” said Faith Spotted Eagle, founder of the Braveheart Society. “We consider the archaeological survey substandard.”
Several tribal representatives at the meeting also called for a 5-mile buffer zone around the monument to prevent future projects from threatening the site. Commissioner Audrey Partridge voted not to approve the permit, citing her support for a buffer zone.
Commissioner John Tuma said the PUC did not have the authority to deny the permit, despite the hearing’s briefing papers listing an outright denial as one of four possible outcomes. Several commissioners also expressed concern that rejecting the permit would lead to the federal government intervening to restart the current pipeline that lies inactive beneath Pipestone National Monument.
The decision was met with anger from some in the crowd, with one woman shouting “White supremacy!” at commissioners. Lawyers for Magellan were confronted by protestors as they exited the hearing room, with a drum circle starting in the overflow room shortly after.
Dionne-Thunder said that the hearing was the culmination of a process in which tribal nations were treated as an afterthought.
“It felt like they were just checking a box today by having this public hearing,” she said.
Looking forward
The decision comes as a disappointment for tribal nations and activists, with some feeling especially led astray by the contradictions between commissioners’ statements that they lacked the authority to deny the permit and the written briefs stating they did.
“For them to immediately come in and say that there is no no-build option, then why even have that in the agenda?” Dionne-Thunder said. “Why have tribes testify all in solidarity to oppose the permit and then still move forward with the permitting process?”
Still, Dionne-Thunder said the fight to resist the pipeline was far from over.
“Where my mind is and where others’ mind is, immediately, ‘How do we continue to oppose this permit?”’ she said. “What legal avenues and steps can we take to not allow this to happen and to protect Pipestone?”
Tilsen agreed, and said activists and tribes would come together to decide the best next steps.
“We’re fighting over a sacred site and a spiritual place,” he said. “We need to regroup and center ourselves in prayer to decide what’s next.”
