Wisconsin's new mining law attaches no importance to the treaties. When it considers the company's application to mine the Penokee Hills, the state Department of Natural Resources may conclude that it can ignore the resulting diminishment of Chippewa usufructuary rights and the potential adverse impacts on the waters of the Bad River reservation.
But the mine will also require the approval of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and the tribe will have the right to sue in federal court to challenge any permit issued. In these federal forums, the solemn promises that the United States made to the tribe 1842 and 1854 will matter.
A forum, news site and archive begun in February, 2007 about politics and the environment in Wisconsin. And elsewhere.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Legal Expert Explains Treaty Rights Ignored By Pro-Mine Legislators
A must-read.
Good Morning again. Though not a "Wisconsin Issue", the ongoing environmental disaster at the Bayou Corne LA "sinkhole" seems to me (a non-expert opinion) about to take a turn for the worse, as indicated by recent findings re: Big Oil being way too close to, and screwing up the Napoleonville salt dome, filling it with all kinds of toxic crap, etc etc.
ReplyDeleteJindal has been avoiding reality and this issue for over a year and is now suddenly about to get involved, that can't be a good sign. In my (and others of course) opinion, this situation calls into question all the accepted science and current practices of using engineered salt dome caverns to store tons of oil industry and other types of very hazardous, sometimes radioactive, waste. An increasingly important issue with all the non-traditional oil activity that is raping the U.S. in so many ways in so many areas. They assured everyone this was safe early on, and we'll all probably regret that at some point. Salt domes are unstable in that they can (and have done) dissolve. That's a problem. An even bigger problem is seas continue to rise and 'leach" under land. This has not seen much "noooooze" coverage, and has unfortunately been adapted by the conspiracy crowd who are infatuated with the fictional New Madrid mega-quake. Those folks are unwittingly burying this story in their crap. Anyways, it's not really Wisconsin that is "In Extremis" yet. We're kind of playing catch up to other places that have been farther along.
This comment is not intended as "spam" I thought as an environmentally interested person you might care. It's a terribly sad and alarming and under-reported situation.
The entirety of the actual treaty language relating to the rights to the products of the land and the tribal interests in these products are contained in the following words in Article 2 of the treaty of 1842 also known as the copper treaty in which the mineral lands of the south shore of lake Superior were purchased for the purpose of mining:
ReplyDelete“The Indians stipulate for the right of hunting on the ceded territory, with the other usual privileges of occupancy, until required to remove by the President of the United States, and that the laws of the United States shall be continued in force, in respect to their trade and intercourse with the whites, until otherwise ordered by Congress.”
But the media that you go out of your way to protect (unless there is a meaningless typo in a headline) says that this does not impact the environment.
ReplyDeleteAnd the MEDIA is who has blanketed the state with lies that this is a jobs bill.
And the federal court system you promote as the "white in shiny armor" is actually the same court system that used fraudulent treaties to shove Native Americans off their land in the first place.
And when this goes to the SCOTUS, under current composition, the same cabal that believes that Constitutional Rights like voting are ENTITLEMENTS will have the final say.
You post a lot about the mining issues, but it is all meaningless without the context it is being implemented.
You actually prop up one of the major walker shills. We got were we are today by:
P R O P A G A N D A
And it is extremely effective, especially when self-proclaimed pundits and "experts" ignore it.
The treaty was forced on the Indians at gun point. They had no choice but to sign it or die and they didn’t want to sign nothing and didn’t want or need nothing from the white oppressors. It shouldn’t even be considered to be a legally binding document because of how they were tricked and forced into signing it. The only way to resolve this gross injustice done upon them is to give them a unique and respected status and that is what the courts have done under the action of enforcing treaty rights. It is now an accepted legal precedent that any issue involving treaties must be resolved in the favor of the Indians in order to correct the past, and this is why the treaties will be used to stop the mine. It makes no difference if the treaties spelled out the right to prohibit mining or not, the treaties can and will be interpreted in a way to conclude that they do indeed prohibit mining because that is the how the law says they must be interpreted. These racists of northern Wisconsin really disgusts me.
ReplyDelete