Republicans want their way with Wisconsin’s buried gold, but the Anishinaabe aren’t having it

[marmar]

from In These Times:


Gold Diggers and Indians
Republicans want to have their way with Wisconsin’s buried gold, but the Anishinaabe aren’t having it.

BY Joel Bleifuss


President Barack Obama carried Wisconsin by 52 to 46 percent—winning the state by more than 200,000 votes. Yet, curiously, the Wisconsin Republican Party solidified its control of both the Wisconsin state assembly and senate. It is now certain that Gov. Scott Walker (R) is in a position to turn his state’s natural resources over to the corporate bag men who helped make that victory possible.

Today, in the Northwoods of the Upper Midwest the mining industry is busy prospecting. Like Africa’s Congo River Basin, this area of the Great Lakes Basin is rich in valuable minerals. Unlike the Congo, it is peaceful.

At least for now.

The gold rush is on, the natives are restless.

Aquila Resources has its sights set on gold deposits at five sites in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. According to the company’s website, “the Great Lakes region [offers] a politically stable and increasingly attractive investment opportunity.” For example, the company boasts that its Reef Gold Project in Marathon County, Wis., “is potentially amendable to low cost, open pit mining.” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/14289/gold_diggers_and_indians

[el_bryanto]

1. That'll be interesting.

Probably there will be some accommodation made; unless the Anishinaabe are more well off than most tribes, they need money. And this will give them money.

Bryant

[reteachinwi]

2. The next installment on the Indian War

The Anishinaabe are a radical lot. In the late 1980s, they defended their right to fish outside of reservation boundaries, as was originally agreed upon under federal treaties in 1837 and 1842. After what became known as the Wisconsin Walleye Wars, their fishing rights were upheld by a federal judge.
And while La Duke (she was Ralph Nader’s Green Party running mate in the ill-fated 2000 election) and Wiggins speak in the measured language of public figures, Anishinaabe youth are dead set in opposing the mine.
“Without the wild rice our way of life will disappear,” says Len Moore, a young Bad River man with long black hair and silver bear-paw earrings that mark his membership in the tribe’s Bear Clan.
“If the Bad River goes and becomes toxic and bleeds right into Lake Superior, everything will suffer down the chain. We, as a people, have a little bit left of what our ways were, and we try to preserve them as best we can.
“We wish no ill will towards any of the mining corporations or their personnel. But we do need to defend and protect what we have—however that works out.”
http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=87662&s=15ead9f453be43e4f3a5fb6183313d95&p=425765
Apologies for the &!@?$ quotation marks.