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The Crandon Mine Saga
T he bitter 27-year battle over the unpopular proposed Crandon mine is over. Two Wisconsin Native American tribes combined forces to purchase mineral rights to an estimated 55 million tons of zinc- and copper-laden ore, and the land containing these minerals, from Northern Wisconsin Resources Group LLC (NWRG).
On October 28, 2003, the Forest County Potawatomi and the Sokaogan band of Chippewa announced their purchase of 5,770 acres of the Crandon mine site for $16.5 million. The tribal groups also gained control of their previous enemy, Nicolet Minerals Company, a subsidiary of NWRG. Nicolet Hardwood Corporation, a local timber company logging the region since 1870, will co-manage timber resources with the tribes.
The Sokaogan Chippewa, consistently labeled the poorest tribe in Wisconsin, operate a modest casino in the small community of Mole Lake. Tourists and vacationers regularly cruise through the town on their way north. The proposed mine sits closest to the community’s Rice Lake. Sulfide mining threatened the imminent demise of their culture, which depends on wild rice beds they’ve defended since appropriating the lands from previous Sioux occupants in the 1700s.
Sokaogan tribal secretary Thomas VanZile recognizes that the fight to protect the land has involved “great personal sacrifice for tribal members. But it is a sacrifice that honors our ancestors and our children.”
The Potawatomi have managed to raise their standard of living by operating a massive casino in downtown Milwaukee’s Menom- inee River valley, 180 miles to the south. The tribal group fought vigilantly to secure the urban site, first purchasing the land and then wheeling and dealing to obtain legal permits for a bingo hall that eventually morphed into a casino as Wisconsin’s anti-gambling senti- ments changed.
The land will be distributed evenly between the two tribal groups who are also splitting expenses. Lacking the substantial revenues the Potawatomi earn, the Sokaogan Chippewa will be hard pressed to pay their share. The Green Bay Press Gazette asked Bob Schmitz, organizer of the Wolf River Watershed Alliance, how the Sokaogan could afford the purchase. His reply: “These people have mortgaged their homes and their futures and probably their children’s and grandchildren’s futures.”
Also on October 28, Glenn Reynolds, long-time legal counselor for the Sokaogan, found himself serving as project manager for newly-acquired Nicolet Minerals Company. The Madison-based attorney drafted letters to Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Army Corps of Engineers, formally withdrawing applications for mining permits. He wrote: “Since most of the proposed pollution prevention technology for this project has eventually failed over the long term, it is highly likely that the citizens of the state would eventually be faced with the burdens of clean-up costs in perpetuity if this project were built as designed.”
Resource wars have raged in the communities of Crandon and Mole Lake since 1976 when Exxon Minerals, a subsidiary of Exxon Oil, reported finding zinc-copper deposits nestled in the headwaters of the Wolf River. Despite their best public relations blitz, Exxon quickly found itself fighting a losing battle for those minerals.
As the prices of zinc and copper waxed and waned over the years, so did corporate interest in the mineral riches. Native Americans—including the Menominee 30 miles down the Wolf River—environmentalists, and a collection of landowners, vacationers, and activists, formed an alliance to fight Exxon’s multipronged attack. Exxon attempted to divide and conquer this ragtag league, but dirty practices only served to strengthen public resolve. In 1982, various groups founded the Wisconsin Resource Protection Council to counteract Exxon’s mine application process.
Even when current Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, an advocate for development and big business’s number one amigo, sat on Wisconsin’s throne, Exxon had little luck. Thompson gave Exxon as much help as he could muster, appointing key positions to grease the rails to Exxon’s success. The WRPC coalition held Exxon in a stalemate that lasted until 1998 when the multinational sold 50 percent of its interest in the mine to Rio Algom, which renamed the project Nicolet Minerals Company, its name drawn from the surrounding Nicolet National Forest.
Various locals, enticed by economic opportunity, worked diligently to further Exxon’s plans, turning on friends and family in the process. The proposed mine pitted the town of Nashville, which did not want 400 acres of tailing ponds, against Lincoln township, which would have “benefited” from the mine’s alleged tax revenues. Potawatomi spokespeople argued that the “boomtown” syndrome would bust Crandon as soon as Exxon pulled out of the area, citing a former mayor of Craig, Colorado, who argued, after his community was ruined: “The mining companies’ economic growth projections weren’t worth the paper they were written on.” In the meantime, Forest County and the communities would need to provide services for the influx of mine employees. While many locals hoped to find jobs at the new mine, others pointed out that mine personnel would likely come from outside Wisconsin.
While corporate spokespeople argued mining would have a negligible environmental impact, skeptical locals did their own research. The Menominee Nation commissioned a study revealing that long- and short-term consequences of the proposed sulfide mine on the Wolf River Basin would be profound. Of the 58 million tons of acidic tailings produced in the mine’s 20-year predicted life, Al Gedicks, author of Resource Wars (South End Press), notes, “Approximately half of the tonnage would consist of fine tailings, with the consistency of talcum powder, and would contain high levels of acid-generating sulfides and other heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium, zinc, copper, mercury, etc.).” The Wolf, sacred to the Menominee, would never be a source of drinking water again.
Among Exxon’s more egregious strategies to implement their mine were attempts to pressure Department of Natural Resources Secretary Carroll Besadny into changing the status of the upper Wolf River as an “Outstanding Resource Water.” The corporation received help from the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board. Three Thompson-appointed members of the Board “consistently blocked Outstanding classification for the Wolf River,” according to Gedicks.
Wisconsinites sighed a needed breath of relief as Governor Thompson stumbled off to Washington, heeding Bush II’s call.
In many battles that pit economic gain against environmental preservation, corporations drive wedges to split local people along ideological lines, creating small-scale civil wars. By crafting simplistic dichotomies—jobs vs. unemployment, wealth vs. poverty, Native Americans vs. whites—public relations flacks frame discourse, distracting citizens from turning their criticism on the real culprits. Corporations milk these divisions to their benefit, providing sizable funding to their chosen side. While Exxon and its clones invested millions in the propaganda campaign, the money, tax-deductible water over the dam for the corporations, may fuel anger and frustration in communities for decades to come. These relatively impoverished rural communities may revive the anti-Native American bigotry that overwhelmed northern Wisconsin throughout the 1980’s treaty-rights controversies.
The tribes will likely place the newly-acquired lands in a tax-exempt federal trust, effectively withdrawing the properties from local tax rolls. Forest County officials who already contend with limited tax income since 82 percent of the County’s land is in tax-free national forest, state-owned land, or Indian reservation, fear that losing property taxes from the 5,770 acres will put undue stress on taxpayers. With state and federal governments facing their own economic woes, Forest County is not likely to receive financial assistance and will need to cut social services even further.
How are outraged citizens going to cope with their last hopes for relative prosperity dashed by the ruthless Indians? Victor Bellomy, retired from the Department of Natural Resources, explained to the Journal-Sentinel , “None of us are angry at the Indians. It’s federal policy we fight. I don’t blame the Indians for taking a free lunch.” Now he and his brethren will labor to obstruct federal policy that they claim victimizes disgruntled white folk. Such racist sentiments may very well bend the ears of Ashcroft and Bush, two staunch advocates for pushing public policy headlong back into the 20th, if not the 19th, century.
Bellomy’s alleged “free lunch” cost the Indians and their allies millions over the years. They prevailed by establishing the priority of environmental over economic well-being in a region famed for its natural beauty. But getting the message to the people, many living in Madison and Milwaukee, took strategy as well as dollars.
While Exxon spent millions on television spots and full-page newspaper ads, the organized opposition worked with minuscule budgets in comparison. By the mid-1990s, the Internet became a cheap, effective tool for spreading the word on the mine. In 1995, two activist sisters living in Shawano, a gateway city to northern Wisconsin, started the web-based organization EarthWINS in an effort to educate folks statewide of the Crandon mine and to build a national and international hub for information on similar legal battles.
Other activists opposed to the mine turned to EarthWINS for web hosting, website development and registration, and other free or low-cost services that built their Internet presence. Online activism brought an anti-mining message to concerned individuals throughout the state, nation, and world.
Debra McNutt and Zoltan Grossman of the Midwest Treaty Network maintain that the protracted legal battle forged connections between formerly adversarial groups and “brought together Native American nations with sportfishing groups, environmentalists with unionists, and rural residents with urban students.” “Old-fashioned grassroots organizing” connected these fragmented parts into a politically powerful whole that accomplished what few believed possible.
By elevating a local battle to the state and national level, activists enlisted the energy, influence, and comparative wealth of environmentalists who valued the pristine nature of the region. These locals who view Indians as the enemy fail to register urban-rural power differentials as a more significant explanation for their loss. Madison’s activist community, much closer to the state’s power structures, influenced policy in the capital city.
The purchase agreement may set precedent for other gambling- wealthy tribes fighting similar resource wars. Environmental racism has depended on indigenous peoples’ susceptibility to economic incentives in exchange for health- threatening nuclear waste or environmentally-destructive resource extraction. With padded wallets, tribes that have bilked foolhardy gamblers of their savings may be more likely to say “No” to exploiters.
While boosting morale for the Sokaogan and Potawatomi, the land purchase has seriously demoralized mining advocates. Former mining company director, Gordon Connor, Jr., blames an “anti-corporate culture” in the state for his inability to sell the minerals to any mining interests in the world.
This model for resistance, already proven effective in the north woods of the U.S. dairyland, may be one of Wisconsin’s most valuable exports, eclipsing the ephemeral wealth secreted in a bed of zinc and copper.
Douglas J. Buege, an educator and freelance writer, holds a doctorate in environmental philosophy and spends as much time as possible in Wisconsin’s north woods.
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OCCUPY TOGETHER - Occupy Together is the unofficial hub for the various occupations springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. Towns and cities worldwide are participating.
Contact: http://www.occupytogether.org/.
MAY DAY - May 1 is May Day, also International Workers Day, celebrating the successful fight of workers for rights such as the eight-hour workday. A General Strike is called for May Day by many groups, and events are planned worldwide.
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LABOR - The 2012 Labor Notes Conference, themed Solidarity for the 99%, will be held May 4-6, in Chicago. Thousands of union members, officers, and grassroots labor activists will attend the event, which features workshops, meetings and organizing opportunities.
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MARIJUANA MARCH - On the first Saturday of May (this year: May 5) marijuana legalization activists will hold informational and educational events, rallies and marches in over 300 cities around the world.
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AMERICAN MUSLIMS - KinderUSA will celebrate its 10th Anniversary with a Fundraising Banquet Dinner in Los Angeles on May 5. The keynote speaker will be Norman Finkelstein. KinderUSA was founded as a group of concerned humanitarians and physicians, and has become a leading American Muslim charity organization helping families through health development and emergency relief.
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SEXUAL VIOLENCE - SWAN (Service Women’s Action Network) will present Truth and Justice: The 2012 Summit on Military Sexual Violence in Washington, D.C. on May 8. The conferences will give survivors the opportunity to share their stories with congressmembers, policy experts and the general public; with key panels by military law and policy experts on major topics involving military sexual violence and survivors’ access to justice.
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MOTHER’S DAY/PEACE - The Mother’s Day Walk for Peace began in 1996 for families who had lost their children to violence. On a day that celebrates mothers and children, the Walk became a place for families and friends to feel support and love with thousands of others who pledge their commitment to peace.
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BRECHT FORUM - The Beginning Is Near: An Evening with Michael Moore & Cornel West, a special benefit for the Brecht Forum, will be held May 18 at Hunter College in New York City.
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LABOR - The Pacific Northwest Labor History Association’s 44th annual conference, A Century of Bread and Roses, is scheduled for May 18-20 in Tacoma, WA.
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NATO/G8 - The Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda is organizing protests at the NATO and G8 meetings being held in Chicago, May 19-21. A legal, permitted, family-friendly march and rally are planned for May 19. An Occupy Chicago month-long occupation is being planned to begin May 1. The Network for a Nato-Free Future and American Friends Service Committee will also be hosting a Counter-Summit for Peace and Economic Justice May 18-19 at People’s Church in Chicago.
Contact: http://cang8.wordpress.com/about/; http://www.natofreefuture.org/.
ANARCHY FEST - A month-long Festival of Anarchy is scheduled for May in Montreal. The festival includes The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair (May 19-20).
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FEMINIST SCI-FI - The feminist science fiction convention WisCon 36 is scheduled for May 25-28 in Madison, Wisconsin, featuring discussion and debate of sci-fi/fantasy ideas relating to feminism, gender, race and class.
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MULTICULTURE - The 25th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) holds its annual conference May 29 -June 2 in New York City.
Contact: Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies, 3200 Marshall Avenue, Suite 290, Norman, OK 73072; 405- 325-3694; www.ncore.ou.edu.
BIKING - Bikes Not Bombs is holding its 24th annual Bike-A-Thon and Green Roots Festival in Boston, MA on June 3, with several bike rides scheduled, music, exhibitors and more.
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RADIO - The 37th Annual Community Radio Conference is scheduled for June 13-16 in Houston, TX with discussions and workshops.
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PEOPLE’S SUMMIT - The People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice during Rio+20 is an event by global civil society that will take place between the 15 and the 23 of June at Flamengo, in Rio de Janeiro—alongside the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), Rio+20.
Contact: contato@rio2012. org.br; http://cupuladospovos.org.br/en/.
ADC CONFERENCE - The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ACD) holds its annual conference June 21-24 in Washington, DC, with panel discussions and workshops on civil rights, media, the Mideast, etc.
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MEDIA - The 14th annual Allied Media Conference will be held June 28-July 1 at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Participatory workshops and skillshares will emphasize DIY alternative media to advance visions of a just and creative world.
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LA RAZA - The annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Conference is scheduled for July 7-10 in Las Vegas, with workshops, presentations and panel discussions.
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PEACESTOCK - On July 14 the 10th Annual Peace- stock: A Gathering for Peace will take place at Windbeam Farm in Hager City, WI. Peacestock (formerly “Pigstock”) is a mixture of music, speakers, and community for peace. The event is sponsored by Veterans for Peace, Chapter 115 and has a peace-themed agenda.
Contact: Bill Habedank, 1913 Grandview Ave., Red Wing, MN 55066; 651-388-7733; billhabedank@yahoo.com; http://www.peacestockvfp.org.
POPULAR ECONOMICS - The Center for Popular Economics is holding its 2012 Summer Institute July 23-27 at Columbia University in New York City. No background in economics is needed for this intensive training. This year’s theme is Economics for the 99%.
Contact: Center for Popular Economics, PO Box 785 Amherst, MA 01004; 413-545-0743; programs@populareconomics.org; www.populareconomics.org.
CUBA/PASTORS - The 23rd annual Pastors for Peace Friendship Caravan to Cuba is scheduled for
July1-July 31. Volunteers will travel across the U.S and Canada collecting aid and educating about the unjust blockade against Cuba, before an orientation in Texas July 15-18, followed by an education program in Cuba July 21-29, and finally a return back to the U.S. People can participate by attending or hosting local events, donating materials, or sponsoring a traveler.
Contact: IFCO/Pastors for Peace, 418 W. 145th St., New York, NY 10031; 212-926- 5757; cucaravan@igc.org; www.pastorsforpeace.org.
COMMUNITY MEDIA - The Alliance for Community Media 2012 National Conference is scheduled for July 31-August 2 in Chicago. Hands-on workshops and skillshares will be offered by this grassroots coalition of community media groups. This year’s theme is Collaborate!
Contact: ACM, 1760 Old Meadow Road, Suite 500, McLean, VA 22102; www.alliancecm.org.
VETERANS - Veterans for Peace is holding the 27th annual convention August 8-12 in Miami, FL. This year’s theme is, Liberating the Americas: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Contact: Veterans For Peace, 216 S. Meramec Ave., St. Louis, MO 63105; 314-725-6005; www.vfpnationalconvention.org
COMMUNITIES - The Communities Conference is a networking and learning opportunity for co-operative or communal lifestyles, with workshops, events and entertainment; scheduled for August 31-September 3 at the Twin Oaks Community in Louisa, Virginia.
Contact: Twin Oaks Communities Conference, 138 Twin Oaks Road, Louisa, VA 23093; 540-894-5126; conference@ twinoaks.org; www.communitiesconference.org.


