From Ashland Current (Wis.): Anti-mining meeting example of actual democracy

ASHLAND, Wis. -- "According to Saginaw Chippewa member Marty Curry, who lives on Madeline Island, tribes ought to offer conservation jobs, selective timber harvest, habitat improvement, and wild rice re-reseeding to the community. Curry says, 'We shouldn’t trade two hundred years of hunting, fishing, basket making, sugar bushing and gathering wild rice for 35 years of mining jobs.'"

This is one statement from a recent meeting on the Bad River Reservation which focused on efforts by the Cline Mining group to open a large, metallic sulfide, acid producing, open pit mine in the Penokees, upstream from the reservation sugar bushes, wild rice beds and Chequamegon Bay.

Read this opinion piece by Nick Vander Puy of La Pointe, Wis., published Feb. 9, 2011, in the Ashland Current.