By Mordecai Specktor
A visit to Gichigami
In early August, I traveled with my wife, Maj-Britt, up to Gichigami (Lake Superior) — it’s my favorite area in Minnesota. We enjoyed the beaches, state parks and the sound of wind through the trees. Our base camp for three nights was a resort up in the hills north of Lutsen.
I was going to write about enjoying fresh air Up North, but the air became hazier as we approached Duluth. There had been air quality alerts in the Twin Cities due to smoke from Canadian wildfires. In late July, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) extended an air quality alert for all of Minnesota through Aug. 4 (later ended on Aug. 3): “The affected area covers all of Minnesota and the Tribal Nations of Upper Sioux, Mille Lacs, Prairie Island, Leech Lake, White Earth, Red Lake, Grand Portage, and Fond du Lac.”
Of course, the situation was even worse north of the border.
“Thousands of people in Eastern Canada are under evacuation orders and thousands more have been warned to be on high alert as quick-moving wildfires burn out of control during what has become Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record,” the New York Times reported in mid-August.
“There are over 700 active fires in Canada, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, the national firefighting coordinating body, and many large wildfires are occurring in parts of the country where fires typically stay small.”
A spokesperson for the center told the Times that provinces in the western half of the country, especially Saskatchewan and Manitoba, have seen the most intense wildfires. “The largest fire is the Shoe fire, in Saskatchewan, which has been burning since May 7,” according to the newspaper. “At 1.4 million acres, it’s larger than Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.”
This is our world in the midst of climate change. Over the summer, when the rains stopped and we could get back to outdoors recreation, we were warned to stay inside because the air quality posed a health hazard. Leaders of the incipient fascist regime in the United States believe that global warming is a hoax propounded by Al Gore; and the subject is rarely discussed by Democratic Party elected officials.
Still, you have to live your life.
I usually jump into the frigid water of the big lake, but in August I only waded in the water at Black Beach by Silver Bay. Grand Marais was packed with tourists, as the Cook County Market was operating on the weekend. We visited the North House Folk School, where a gaggle of elders was chopping away on hunks of wood.
A highlight of the vacation was a visit to Grand Portage State Park, the only Minnesota state park on reservation land. In 2000, Minnesota returned ownership of the 300-acre park to the Grand Portage Ojibwe Band. More than 50 years ago, the area was taken from the band in a tax forfeiture. The park is now co-managed by the Grand Portage Band and the state. The Anishinaabe history of Grand Portage is explained at the park’s visitor center.
On our short trek to the High Falls, the tallest waterfall in Minnesota, we encountered a fox with a mouse in its mouth. On the return trip, the same fox was lingering by the paved trail.
And we stopped at the Grand Portage Trading Post, where I bought manoomin (wild rice). The grain was packed in unmarked plastic storage bags on a rack near the front of the store. The clerk said that the manoomin was from White Earth.
We didn’t travel with our passports, so we couldn’t cross into Canada. We looked over into Canada.
Trump boosts sulfide mining
The Timberjay newspaper (timberjay.com) recently reported that NewRange Copper Nickel (formerly known as PolyMet Mining) plans to reveal plans for the NorthMet copper-nickel project near Babbit in September.
The destructive sulfide mining scheme was given a boost by the Trump administration in May, when NorthMet was designated “as one of 20 mining projects in the country to qualify as a FAST-41 ‘transparency project,’ which is designed to streamline permitting on infrastructure-related projects,” according to The Timberjay story.
The Biden administration revoked a Clean Water Act permit, “previously granted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the mineral-rich Duluth Complex,” according to the Institute for Energy Research. The federal action in 2023 was “based on claims that the permit did not comply with the water quality standards set by a sovereign downstream tribe, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.”
Apart from the benighted policies of the Trump regime, there is still the matter of acquiring state permits that would allow NewRange to start digging.
