April 23, 2025
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
The Gold Resource Corporation’s (GORO) Back Forty Project continues to be on indefinite hold. GORO lost $56.5 million in 2024, while cash reserves dropped from $6.3 million in 2023 to $1.6 million as of December 31, 2024, according to CEO Allen Palmiere.
Editorial Note: Al Gedicks is a legend. We are pleased to share this interview with Al recounting the mining and Indigenous struggles of the 1970s-1990s in occupied Turtle Island, in the area known as Wisconsin, USA. Professor Gedicks emerges from the anti-war/military struggle in the 1960s, and militant action on the University Wisconsin-Madison campus, recounted in the book: RADS: The 1970 Bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin and Its Aftermath by Tom Bates (1992). Al’s work would continue by researching imperialism in Latin America, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the struggle against mines in Great Lakes region. This interview, we hope, serves to remind people of these struggles and connect generations with this past, all-the-while reminding everyone that many of the extractivism issues, governmental institutions and non-governmental betrayals are not new, but continuous into the present.
August 28, 2024
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
The Gold Resource Corporation’s (GORO) Back Forty Project continues to be on indefinite hold. When CEO Allen Palmiere was recently asked whether the project was “in limbo” by an investor, he said that he didn’t like the term limbo but it was not inappropriate. “In the current financial climate for junior companies,” he said, “it would be virtually impossible for us to finance it. And rather than spend money on Back Forty currently, what we’ve chosen to do is spend the money on exploration in Don David (GORO’s Mexican mine) where we know we can generate cash flow.” GORO reported a net loss of $27.7 million for the second quarter of 2024 and a cash balance of $5.3 million. The longer GORO postpones the Back Forty permitting process, the more expensive it will be to resume the process when inflationary pressures have dramatically increased the cost of the project.
May 22, 2024
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
The Gold Resource Corporation’s (GORO’s) Back Forty Project is on indefinite hold. After spending over $10 million on mine permitting for the Back Forty Project, GORO has suspended any further investment in the permitting process. GORO’s cash on hand dropped from $33.7 million at the end of 2021 to $6.3 million in May 2024. The longer the project remains on hold, the less likely GORO will be able to raise sufficient capital to revive the project. “In light of the continued challenges facing the Company,” GORO told its shareholders, “the Company’s Board of Directors has decided to initiate a formal review process…to evaluate strategic alternatives for the Company…including a potential sale of the Company.” (GORO 2023 Annual report, p. 5).
January 31, 2024
by Al Gedicks
Sandy Lyon and Walt Bresette at the acid train blockade on the Bad River Ojibwe reservation. | Photo by Kathy Olson, published with permission.
Ojibwe environmental and treaty rights activist Walt Bresette will be inducted posthumously into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame (WCHF) in a virtual ceremony on April 17, 2024. Bresette will join over 100 members inducted since the Hall of Fame’s inception, including Aldo Leopold, Nina Leopold Bradley, John Muir, Gaylord Nelson and Menominee Nation environmentalist Hilary Waukau, Sr.
October 30, 2023
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
In June 2023 the National Park Service added Anaem Omot (“The Dog’s Belly”), a Menominee Nation cultural landscape along the Menominee River near Stephenson Michigan, to the National Register of Historic Places. Tribal Historic Preservation Director David Grignon said the listing “has been a long time in coming, but now our sacred sites, mounds and historic sites on the Menominee River at Sixty Islands are recognized.” Menominee tribal chairperson Gena Kakkak added, “Our ancestors can now rest better in their places of burial. Our original spiritual and ceremonial grounds are recognized, and our children can continue to learn and find their heritage in our places of origin.”
