In January 2022, the Biden Administration canceled the leases for the proposed Twin Metals copper and nickel mine in Northern Minnesota—a decision still subject to appeal despite years of opposition and heated debate. A broad coalition of activists contend that the mineral byproducts (tailings) from Twin Metals and other proposed copper-sulfide mines would pose significant risks to the state’s water bodies and the plants, animals, and people who rely on them.
Some of the most vocal critics of the mines have been citizens of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, a sovereign Ojibwe nation composed of several autonomous bands in the state’s northern region. In Ojibwe culture, water is inextricably tied to traditional subsistence practices. The bands have harvested manoomin (wild rice) and fish on the waters of Lake Superior and in the region near its western shore since long before the area became the state of Minnesota. As a recent report by the Resource Management Division of the Fond du Lac Band puts it, these waterborne resources provide “irreplaceable cultural and nutritional benefits” to the Ojibwe. On the other side of the conflict are the owners of the sites—large multinational mining companies—along with state legislators, local officials, and area residents who support the industry. For its proponents, copper mining is a potential source of jobs and economic revitalization for Northern Minnesota.
Though no commercial copper mines have ever been established in the state, interest in extracting the resource in Minnesota dates to the 1960s. The tendency to favor those interests over the protection of the state’s waters also has deep historical roots. In fact, it was the state government itself that drove this prioritization of copper mining—demonstrated by a 1961 report authored by George M. Schwartz, the director of the Minnesota Geological Survey (MGS). Commissioned by Governor Elmer Andersen after a meeting with several elders of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, the report, titled “Development possibilities of the Indian reservation lands in Minnesota,” was intended to compile information on natural resources that might be of use in “developing additional sources of income” for the inhabitants of the reservations. With contributions from the MGS, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Minnesota Department of Conservation (renamed the Department of Natural Resources in 1971), Schwartz framed the project as a comprehensive study of “all aspects of resources” on the reservations.
Yet even choosing the MGS as the project’s lead agency betrayed the state government’s underlying assumptions about which resources are worth developing. The report viewed Chippewa lands with a “mineral gaze,” as it considered valuable resources to be only those that could be extracted from beneath the soil—an assumption driven by the decline of Minnesota’s long-important mining industry that was accelerating at the time. In the report, Schwartz and his colleagues imagined a prosperous, revitalized mining future for the state. But this vision conveniently overlooked the mounting evidence of mining’s toxic consequences for regional watersheds. This perspective—and the state agencies that have historically supported it—lies behind both current interests in copper mining and the accompanying indifference to the water resources that are so important for the Minnesota Chippewa.