A new day brings another example of WI Republicans slamming a minority population in favor of special corporate interests:
A new bill being circulated in the state Legislature could settle a years-long legal fight over the protected status of Native American effigy mounds located in a limestone quarry in the town of Blooming Grove.The same issue has been raised by the proposed construction of a high-end golf course on a 247-acre forest and wetland on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan near the City of Sheboygan:
The property includes at least one Indian burial mound.
The Black River area was home to a "continuous string" of American Indian populations, according to DNR planning documents. [The adjacent state park] Kohler-Andrae has 21 known archaeological sites.Remember that Wisconsin, by law, recently made it easier for public schools to retain Native American logos and nicknames, has a long history of fighting with Ojibwa tribes over treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights, and rewrote mining law to allow destructive and polluting open-pit iron mining upstream from the Bad River reservation's land and rice-growing estuaries close to Ashland and Lake Superior.
The Republican legislators can find more crap to legislate about but none of it to raises wages, creates jobs, benefit public education, safe guard our environment nor improve the life and well being of Wisconsin citizens! They have attacked public education, gave license to abuse and destroy of our natural resources, erode worker rights and attempt to kill open government all in the name of profits for big business, corporations and special interests.
ReplyDeleteExpect a long, drawn-out legal battle. The tribes have a cultural imperative, and the development interests have, uh, almost unlimited layers of lawyers and the friendly assistance from current state government.
ReplyDeleteI fear for the nation when everything has a price on it, and we value nothing about our traditions and history. Those mounds belong to the ages. PLEASE protect them.
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