January is Trafficking Awareness Month. This article is the Violence Prevention Center’s (VPC’s) response to sex trafficking and the Enbridge Pipeline, which begins in Hardisty, Alberta Canada and ends in Superior, Wisconsin. This pipeline will be constructed over 337 miles in Minnesota, including near multiple reservations and through the Fond du Lac Reservation. We see a need for awareness with predicted rise in human trafficking vulnerabilities.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, “human trafficking includes the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. Traffickers lure their victims and force them into labor or commercial sexual exploitation.”
At no fault of their own, individuals from marginalized communities are at a higher risk of being subjected to trafficking. This is due to systemic oppression and the lasting effects of colonization that is deeply rooted in our society’s structures. Traffickers prey on those with visible vulnerabilities and use many psychological forces of manipulation to eventually trap their victims in the life of trafficking. Those who are at highest risk of being subjected to trafficking are members of marginalized communities, youth, women and girls, two-spirit and LGBTQ+ people, people of color, people with disabilities, people seeking safety from abusive homes, people experiencing homelessness, and similar vulnerabilities.
Some folks may not realize that sex trafficking is happening all around our state, including rural Minnesota. In 2019, current VPC Director attended a sex trafficking training in Minnesota and spoke with a group of researchers who had completed a statewide study on sex trafficking based off interviews with victims of trafficking, which included victims who had been trafficked in Cook County.
Tragically, the extraction industry (mining, pipeline communities, and the like) is undeniably associated with a rise in violence against women, especially in violence against indigenous women. Further, exploitation of indigenous lands goes hand-in-hand with the exploitation of indigenous women and two-spirit individuals. In fact, indigenous women are two-and-a-half times more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other demographic in the United States, and the expansion of extractive industries in and around tribal lands often leads to rates of violence that are even higher. The fact that extraction often takes place in remote places makes it hard for victim/ survivors to access protective services, legal advocates, and allies. According to a 2016 National Institute of Justice Report, 56 percent of Indigenous women have been subjected to sexual violence in their lifetime, and 38 percent were unable to receive any services. In Minnesota, in some parts of the state, Indigenous women are murdered at rates more than ten times the national average. Crime in North Dakota increased roughly 18 percent between 2008 and 2013 (during the peak of the oil boom).
Minnesota has been preparing for a sex trafficking surge due to Line 3. The state’s Environmental Impact Statement states in Chapter 11 “the addition of a temporary, cash rich workforce increases the likelihood that sex trafficking or sexual abuse will occur.”
In a Star Tribune article Enbridge”…rejects the allegation that human trafficking will increase in Minnesota as a result of the Line 3 replacement project.” Yet Enbridge established an account to financially support work around Human Trafficking along the Line and for the re-imbursement of human trafficking expenses related to Line 3 as required by the Minnesota’s Public Utility Commission. The Department of Public Safety/Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and the Tribes United Against Sex Trafficking (TRUST) have been working jointly to create a proactive enforcement response to Human Trafficking during this project as well as being reactive to reports of trafficking along the anticipated route. What does this say about the community of Minnesota when our State knew the connection of sex trafficking and Line 3, prepared for humans to be exploited and raped, yet is allowing this pipeline to be built across our home?
“But why?” you might ask. “Why are human trafficking and extraction so closely related?” The general culture on extraction sites is one of excessive cash and entitlement, of male dominance, of isolation and secrecy, and of hidden crimes against fellow humans. This is not to say that every worker is this way. However, we would be remiss to withhold the glaring trends of the extraction culture. Especially in the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, the locations of the job sites were desolate, hence the need for “man camps” to house workers. There is a strain on local law enforcement to maintain their ability to protect and serve their small, rural communities amidst the increased severity and frequency of crimes committed by extraction workers. Western ND law enforcement reported the Bakken as a made-to-order market for sex trafficking: “Thousands of men, far from home and families, are holed up in a remote place with ready cash and not many places to spend it.”
Our VPC program advocate speaks from experience having seen the effects on the MHA nation communities such as Parshall and New Town, ND. As a former ND resident, she has family, friends, and acquaintances who currently or have lived and worked in the western ND towns drastically affected by the culture the pipeline created. Similarly, she supported survivors of human trafficking for two years prior to her move to Cook County in her work at a women’s and children’s emergency shelter. “I feel physically sick whenever I think about it. It is one thing to read and educate yourself about human trafficking, to become familiar with this evil that humans choose to violate against fellow humans. It is absolutely traumatizing to see it firsthand, to hear from and support survivors who have been stolen, bought, sold, gang raped, drugged, assaulted, and manipulated to the point of believing that they are barely even human anymore. Consider how uncomfortable you feel reading about or hearing of real people being subjected to this unthinkable violence. Let it sink it. Allow yourself to feel the discomfort. Now imagine how painful it would feel if this happened to a loved one, to someone you know personally. That is the reality for countless people and families who have lost their loved ones to human trafficking.”
Many folks are unaware of the realities of sex trafficking in their communities. Some people normalize sex trafficking or view it as a victimless crime. Some may see sex trafficking as paying for sex instead of what it really is, paid rape and the violation of a human being. If you have read this article you are now aware of sex trafficking in Minnesota and are now tasked with the responsibility to do something about it. If you see something that may be trafficking say something, attend trainings on sex trafficking, start having conversations with folks in your lives about sex trafficking, demand local schools to provide comprehensive sexual violence prevention education by trained professionals that includes sex trafficking, ask your employer to provide sex trafficking awareness trainings, or donate your time or money to an organization that works with those who have been trafficked.
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