2006 Annual Meeting, Association
of American Geographers
March 7-11, Chicago Illinois
3631: Treaty Rights and Environmental Justice in Northern Wisconsin
Thursday, 3/9/06, from 5:00 PM - 6:40 PM
Session Description:
The Midwest Treaty Network was founded in 1989 as an alliance of Indian and non-Indian community groups supporting Native American sovereignty in the western Great Lakes region, to oppose sportfishing groups' attacks on Chippewa (Ojibwe) spearfishing rights in treaty-ceded territory. In the 1990s, the MTN constructed an "unlikely alliance" of Wisconsin tribes and their former sportfishing group adversaries, to protect fish and wild rice from the proposed Crandon metallic sulfide mine near the Wolf River. In 2003, the alliance not only defeated the world's largest mining corporations, but the Mole Lake and Potawatomi tribes purchased the 5,900-acre mine site.
Fred Ackley and Frances Van Zile will participate as members of the Midwest Treaty Network, and community representatives of the Sokaogon Chippewa Community of the Mole Lake Reservation in northeastern Wisconsin. Mr. Ackley is a tribal judge and a spearfisher and ricer, and Ms. Van Zile is a member of the Mole Lake Mining Impact Committee and a leader in burial repatriation efforts. Their presentations, introduced by MTN co-founder Zoltan Grossman, will use the Wisconsin case study as a departure point for discussing larger issues of place identities cutting across cultural boundaries, and the evolution from natural resource conflicts to local-scale environmental justice and reclaimed tribal lands. The session furthers the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group's goal of building relationships of mutual trust between academic geographers and Indigenous communities.
Keywords: Treaty rights, Sovereignty, Environmental justice, Cultural resource protection, Cross-cultural alliance-building
Organizer(s):
Zoltán Grossman - Evergreen State College
Chair(s):
Zoltán Grossman - Evergreen State College
Panelist(s):
Fred Ackley - Midwest Treaty Network
Fran Van Zile - Midwest Treaty Network
Zoltán Grossman - Evergreen State College
Introducer(s):
Zoltán Grossman - Evergreen State College
