(Posted as a guest blog on request by the author who would like this to receive the widest circulation possible. Alan L. Maki)
June 7, 2011
Dear Editor: After a boiler explosion on a steamer in the anti-lynching novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Aunt Sally asks, "Good gracious! Anybody hurt?" Huck says, "No’m. Killed a n----." Aunt Sally responds, "Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt."
Which is exactly what courses through my mind when I read the pro-mining propaganda saturating our media around Wisconsin supporting the http://madisle.info/2011/06/03/gogebic-taconite-asks-for-public-support-in-hurley-meeting-last-night/#axzz1OcDEmcAE Penokee mountaintop removal project near Mellen. The downstream tribe is never acknowledged. Some people will get hurt more deeply by this iron mining project. And they are the Bad River Ojibwe and ultimately the rest of us in the downstream plume on Cheqaumegon Bay and Lake Superior.
According to our water hydrologist friend Jamie Dunn, who grew up hunting and fishing in the Penokees and was mentored by conservationist Martin Hanson, we can expect the mining "reform" bill will pass right through the Legislature. The Fitzgerald brothers will suddenly announce the introduction of the streamlined iron mining bill, which will lower well water protection standards and deny us the due process right to contest the mine permit.
All that is left us to protect our motherland is that the Bad River Ojibwe won treatment as state status from the federal government, which allows tribal sovereignty to establish more protective water quality standards, and local opposition to the mine, which reflects the spirituality most Indians and many others feel about the water.
This proposed mine has put an assault rifle laser sight dead center on the hearts and minds of the Ojibwe people. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fr5water%2Fwqs5%2Fpdf%2Fbadriver%2Fa%2520TAS%2520Supplemental%2520Letter_final_July232008.pdf&h=5c07a The Bad River people believe state and federal law is inadequate to protect this source of life.
We are adversaries to this proposed mountaintop removal. As the poet Dylan Thomas reminds us, we will not go gentle into that good night. We will rage, rage against the dying of the light. We invoke our grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ fierce tears.
And we will become more humble before Nokomis Aki, Grandmother Earth.
Nick VanderPuy
LaPointe
Which is exactly what courses through my mind when I read the pro-mining propaganda saturating our media around Wisconsin supporting the http://madisle.info/2011/06/03/gogebic-taconite-asks-for-public-support-in-hurley-meeting-last-night/#axzz1OcDEmcAE Penokee mountaintop removal project near Mellen. The downstream tribe is never acknowledged. Some people will get hurt more deeply by this iron mining project. And they are the Bad River Ojibwe and ultimately the rest of us in the downstream plume on Cheqaumegon Bay and Lake Superior.
According to our water hydrologist friend Jamie Dunn, who grew up hunting and fishing in the Penokees and was mentored by conservationist Martin Hanson, we can expect the mining "reform" bill will pass right through the Legislature. The Fitzgerald brothers will suddenly announce the introduction of the streamlined iron mining bill, which will lower well water protection standards and deny us the due process right to contest the mine permit.
All that is left us to protect our motherland is that the Bad River Ojibwe won treatment as state status from the federal government, which allows tribal sovereignty to establish more protective water quality standards, and local opposition to the mine, which reflects the spirituality most Indians and many others feel about the water.
This proposed mine has put an assault rifle laser sight dead center on the hearts and minds of the Ojibwe people. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fr5water%2Fwqs5%2Fpdf%2Fbadriver%2Fa%2520TAS%2520Supplemental%2520Letter_final_July232008.pdf&h=5c07a The Bad River people believe state and federal law is inadequate to protect this source of life.
We are adversaries to this proposed mountaintop removal. As the poet Dylan Thomas reminds us, we will not go gentle into that good night. We will rage, rage against the dying of the light. We invoke our grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ fierce tears.
And we will become more humble before Nokomis Aki, Grandmother Earth.
Nick VanderPuy
LaPointe
madisle.info
HURLEY — On Thursday, Gogebic Taconite officials asked for public support of legislation yet to be introduced in the Wisconsin legislature that would speed up the permitting process for their proposed iron mine.