April 30, 2010
Dear WRPC Member,
On April 15, Jessica Koski, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), spoke to Rio Tinto shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in London. She asked Rio Tinto’s chairman whether his company was going to respect Eagle Rock, a sacred site for members of the KBIC, where Kennecott plans to construct the portal (entryway) for its proposed Eagle nickel sulfide mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Roscoe Churchill at the site of the Flambeau Mine
Minnesota Public Radio (Duluth, MN), November 17, 2009
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/11/17/flambeau/ (November 17, 2009)
Keweenaw NOW
http://keweenawnow.blogspot.com/2009/08/protect-earth-2009-part-1.html (August 8, 2009)
The Mining Journal (Marquette, MI)
http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/530387.html (July 16, 2009)
Kennecott/FMC Press Release, July 15, 2009
http://www.flambeaumine.com/documents/news_releases/Flambeau_Mining_Vows%20Vigorous_Defense.pdf (July 15, 2009)
London Mining Network (London, U.K.)
http://londonminingnetwork.org/2009/06/rio-tinto-sued-for-pollution-at-best-practice-mine/ (June 30, 2009)
Ladysmith News – republished with permission from the Ladysmith News. (June 25, 2009)
Cleanrocks.org
http://ledzep.biz/aga/?tag=flambeau-mining (June 24, 2009)
Wisconsin State Journal (this is the official State newspaper).
http://www.madison.com/wsj (no longer available online)
To: Wisconsin State Journal, Op-Ed Page
wsjopine@madison.com
May 18, 2005
From: Al Gedicks
210 Avon Street # 4
La Crosse, WI 54603
(608) 784-4399
info@wrpc.net
By Al Gedicks and Zoltan Grossman
See Map: Indian reservations and mining sites on Chippewa ceded lands in Northern Wisconsin
Al Gedicks is an environmental and Indigenous rights activist and scholar. In 1977 he founded the Center for Alternative Mining Development Policy to assist Indian tribes and rural communities in the upper midwestern US in resisting ecologically destructive mining projects. He teaches at the Department of Sociology in the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.
Ever since the Romanian cyanide disaster of January 2000, there has been a worldwide movement to ban the use of cyanide in mining. Cyanide is an extremely toxic and volatile chemical. A teaspoon of 2% cyanide solution can kill people and much smaller amounts are deadly to fish and wildlife. The Romanian spill occurred when a dam holding mine wastes overflowed and released cyanide and toxic heavy metals into the Tisza River, a major waterway that spans Romania, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia, eventually emptying into the Danube. Thousands of fish washed up dead on the shores of the Danube and threatened the drinking water for tens of thousands of people. One commentator called the spill Europe’s worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl.
by Al Gedicks and Zoltan Grossman
The following article appears in Cultural Survival Quarterly 25:1 (Spring 2001)
Native resistance to multinational mining corporations in Wisconsin has been growing in northern Wisconsin for over two decades. It started in 1975 when Exxon discovered the large Crandon zinc-copper sulfide deposit in Forest County, one mile upstream of the wild rice beds of the Mole Lake Chippewa (Ojibwe) Reservation, five miles downwind of the Forest County Potawatomi Reservation, and 40 miles (via the Wolf River) upstream of the Menominee Nation.
by Al Gedicks
“The attacks on our sovereignty and treaties are really attacks on our way of life, our way of viewing things. The environment is critical to our being. The same attacks to separate us from our resources and land are being used in Brazil, Alaska, and elsewhere. It’s really racism, with many different names and faces.”
1. Introduction
By Al Gedicks, Sociology
University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
Abstract: Multinational mining companies are finding it increasingly difficult to get approval for new mining projects in sensitive areas in most advanced capitalist nations. To overcome grassroots environmental resistance to new mining projects, multinational corporations, in cooperation with the state, have attempted a variety of strategies, including the following: (1)legislative initiatives to thwart local democratic control; (2) legal challenges to local zoning authority; (3) mass media campaigns; and (4) attacks on tribal sovereignty. The development and effectiveness of these strategies will be evaluated in the context of the intense controversy over metallic sulfide mining in northern Wisconsin.
From Barbara Rose Johnston (ed.)
Life and Death Matters: Human Rights and the Environment at the End of the Millennium
(CA: Alta Mira Press 1997)
By Al Gedicks, Exec. Secretary
WISCONSIN RESOURCES PROTECTION COUNCIL
210 Avon Street #4
La Crosse, WI 54603-3097
(608) 784-4399
Revised and Updated, August 1999
On March 29, 1995, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held a public hearing on the Mole Lake Sokaogon Chippewa Reservation to take comments on Exxon/Rio Algom’s proposed underground zinc-copper mine next to the reservation. Tribal members testified about the historical origins of their present reservation and the significance of the wild rice which they harvest from Rice Lake on the reservation.
