Mining, Toxics, and Environmental Justice for the Anishinaabe

• Main Author: Langston, Nancy
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Yale University Press 2017
• Subjects: anishina*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300212983.003.0006

In 2011, a company named Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) formed in order to develop the largest open-pit mine in the world—just upstream of the Bad River Band’s reservation on Lake Superior. Owned by Cline Resources Development (a company largely focused on coal), GTAC announced that, even without experience in iron mining, it would mine and process Wisconsin’s taconite ore body to take advantage of Asia’s building and steel commodities boom. The mine would have been sited just upstream of the reservation boundary, and the waters flowing out of the mine site would have contaminated water, fish, and Indigenous communities living downstream. After a multi-year battle, the tribe managed to stop the mine.