From ICT:
As the spirits whispered through the towering pines on 40 mile per hour winds atop sacred Eagle Rock, American Indian warrior Levi Tadgerson said, “you can feel our relatives and the spirits with us.”
He stood on the cliff’s edge looking out upon northern Michigan’s Yellow Dog Plains for another approaching storm – literally and figuratively – as Tadgerson’s fellow warriors are trying to stop an international mining giant from destroying the site where Ojibwa ceremonies have taken place as long as elders can remember.
In late April, Kennecott Eagle Minerals began site preparation work for its sulfide mine called the Eagle Project. The entrance to the nickel and copper mine will be built at sacred Eagle Rock.
“We are defending the water, we are defending our treaty rights and our right to practice our culture,” said Tadgerson, who describes himself as “an Anishinaabe man who loves and respects the environment.
“We’re defending our right to live a healthy life and have our kids live a healthy life.”
The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and numerous environment groups are worried because sulfuric acid is a byproduct of sulfide mining plus several companies have announced plans for dozens of similar mines.
Kennecott says environmental protection is a major concern, but opponents say the way the company has operated other mines doesn’t show it.
Hundreds of people have visited the Eagle Rock site recently and those staying in tents include Lakota women, Tadgerson said.
“The people that are here who are making their stand – are not only warriors – but they are clear thinkers,” elder Bobby “Bullet” St. Germaine said of the band of anti-mine fighters. Not a mantle to be used lightly, elders say Tadgerson and all those protecting Eagle Rock are “warriors.”
For more than a century, Eagle Rock has been the site of American Indian ceremonies and nearby pristine springs have been a source of water.
Standing about 150 feet high over nearly five acres, Eagle Rock is covered with towering pines, brush and valleys.
The Eagle Rock defenders have built a “kitchen” and a sweat lodge, council lodge, “wigwams and a long house,” Tadgerson said.
“We’re getting back to the old ways. We are learning the old ways and it’s going to help us defend that water and defend that sacred site.”
The battle is so important to Tadgerson, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community, that he didn’t “properly study” for his senior final exams and even skipped one at Northern Michigan University and missed his Native American grandfather’s funeral.
The mine “shows how backwards our society is – we’d rather poison our waters than drink them and we’d rather poison our air than be able to breathe,” Tadgerson said.
An 1842 federal treaty with the Ojibwa Nation gives American Indians the right to hunt, fish, gather and conduct sacred ceremonies on Eagle Rock and all public lands in the central and western U.P. stretching into Wisconsin and Minnesota. A similar 1837 treaty between the federal government and the Ojibwa is in effect for eastern U.P. and the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
At issue now is whether Kennecott’s Eagle Project sulfide mine still needs an Environmental Protection Agencypermit for the mine water discharge system because the company changed its plans from underground pipes to an above ground system thus withdrawing its permit application.
Kennecott is awaiting EPA reaction to its withdrawal stating publicly it now has all the state permits needed and started surface site preparation work April 16, thus claiming its rights to the property under a lease with the state of Michigan.
“This is our clean water and our land and we don’t want this mine here,” said KBIC member Charlotte Loonsfoot.
Amy Conover of Marquette, Mich. feels let down by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, theMichigan Department of Natural Resources and the EPA.
“This is state land – this is public property – we have trusted our governments.
“It’s important to look after these natural resources,” Conover said. “These multinational corporations come in with their big money … (and) manipulated the very systems that are supposed to be protecting us.”
Pamela Nesbit of Iron River, Mich., St. Germaine’s wife, said she is camping at Eagle Rock because “I am trying to walk in a good way.
“I am here out of love and respect for those who walk with courage.”
“The battle to protect Eagle Rock is an important step in the struggle to recover our country’s soul,” said Rev. Jon Magnuson, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor and one of 100 U.P. faith leaders who signed a 2006 public declaration standing in solidarity with KBIC’s opposition to the permits sought by Kennecott and its parent company Rio Tinto.
“The KBIC confrontation with Rio Tinto, a wealthy irresponsible multinational mining company, is an invitation to honor constitutional promises for protection of Native people’s treaty rights,” Magnuson said. “It carries for all of us a renewed hope of living with the land in a sacred way.”
Adults have a duty “to leave something good behind for the unborn children,” St. Germaine said. The creator has “given us pure water, pure air and good land” that the “contaminated human mind” has desecrated.
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