Roscoe Churchill

R oscoe Churchill, a leader of the environmental movement in Wisconsin, passed away on February 9, 2007 after a long struggle with bone cancer.     Roscoe was born on June 28, 1916 to George and Arminda Churchill, the 10th of 11 children. He grew up on a farm and learned early to work hard and to love nature. He thrived on splitting wood, riding and driving horses, and eating berry pies. He completed County Normal (teachers’ training) in 1937 at the age of 21. In the same year he got his first teaching position and married Evelyn Dorothy Haase, the love of his life. He and Evelyn were happily married for nearly 59 years. 

Churchill was considered the grandfather of Wisconsin’s grassroots anti-mining movement. For more than 30 years, this retired school principal, part-time farmer, former Republican, and Rusk County supervisor, along with his late wife Evelyn, were the heart and soul of the efforts to stop some of the largest mining companies in the world—including Kennecott, Noranda, Exxon, Rio Algom, and BHP Billiton—from destroying the land and clean water from Ladysmith to the Mole Lake Chippewa Reservation near Crandon and from La Crosse County to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

In the early 1970s the Kennecott Copper Company tried to develop a copper mine in Ladysmith and Churchill became concerned that the mine could endanger local groundwater and disrupt dairy farming in Rusk County. Roscoe and Evelyn traveled across the U.S. and Canada, visiting active and abandoned mines and educating themselves about every aspect of mining. Evelyn specialized in Wisconsin’s mining laws and regulations while Roscoe did most of the public speaking and debates with mining company officials and representatives of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). He and Evelyn were among the founders of the Rusk County Citizens Action Group, formed in the mid-1970s to oppose Kennecott’s proposed open pit copper mine on the banks of the Flambeau River. Local opposition stopped the mine in 1976, but the company tried again in 1988 and after running roughshod over local opposition and covering up the presence of endangered species in the Flambeau River, received permits to mine in 1991. The long and sordid history of Kennecott’s interference with local democracy and the courageous resistance is recounted in the forthcoming book by Churchill and his friend Laura Furtman, The Buzzards Have Landed: The Real Story of the Flambeau Mine . 

Discussions around the kitchen table with friends and neighbors led to the drafting and successful passage of the 1998 Wisconsin Mining Moratorium Law, known as the Churchill Moratorium Law within the environmental community. This law set a strict performance standard for mining permits, which required mining companies to demonstrate successful mining and post-mining without polluting surrounding surface and groundwaters. No mining company has been able to meet this standard and Wisconsin soon earned a reputation within the international mining industry as the least attractive place to mine. 

Roscoe’s untiring opposition to ecologically destructive mining had nothing to do with “Not in my backyard” sentiment. He traveled across the state to assist the Indian, environmental, and sportfishing alliance that formed to oppose Exxon’s proposed Crandon mine at the headwaters of the Wolf River. He was an effective speaker and organizer with the Wolf Watershed Educational Project, one of the principal groups that stopped Exxon, Rio Algom, and BHP Billiton from constructing the Crandon mine. Churchill spoke before town and county boards all over western Wisconsin in 1997-98 when Kennecott wanted to explore for copper in Jackson, Trempealeau, Clark, La Crosse, and Eau Claire counties. All five counties voted to ban mining on public lands. Roscoe and Evelyn’s dedication to preserving sustainable economies in Wisconsin received special recognition by several Wisconsin tribes, including the Menominee, the Mole Lake Chippewa, the Forest County Potawatomi, the Lac Courte Oreilles Chippewa, and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. 

Churchill’s fearlessness in the face of irresponsible corporate and bureaucratic power won the admiration and respect of an entire generation of environmental activists. The Churchill farm became a mecca for young people interested in learning of the Wisconsin anti-mining movement. Even when cancer was slowing him down, Churchill continued to help citizen groups opposed to Kennecott’s proposed metallic sulfide mine in the Yellow Dog Plains of Michigan. He said, “We can’t quit fighting, and we’re not going to.”   

Al Gedicks teaches sociology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and is the author of Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations (South End Press, 2001).