Shanai Matteson from Palisade

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When I was younger, and my political involvement was limited to activism in the Twin Cities — before I started organizing back home, I would place most of the blame for injustice and harm on these unreachable public figures, people with so much money or authority that nothing we ever did or said seemed to phase them. The more that I follow the money and connections, seeing what is actually happening in places and communities where wealth is extracted from the earth, and from the people closest to it, I realize just how much power intermediaries hold.

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This is easy to see in our small towns and in our rural region. The role of 'local business leader' or 'advocate (lobbyist)' or 'board member' gets passed down through families or through these paternalistic small town networks. (many of the people in positions of influence are just taking on the same role that their parents and even grand parents had in our communities) They enable and protect the unltra-wealthy and the political leaders in our state and federal government who deliver for special interests, It doesn't seem to matter which side they are on, this is how it works: They get paid just enough to be more comfortable, and are given just enough authority to be more respected in their region than the average working-class person. The more desperate and hollowed out these communities become, the easier it is to get them under control with just a little bit of cash. A couple of years ago, Rio Tinto was offering "small business grants" in Aitkin County — through our county development authority. The grants were $250.

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I once talked to a woman who volunteers for a food shelf that receives a little money like this from Talon Metals ... She said she was concerned about the water, but didn't wanna speak up because if she did, they might take away their food shelf donation, and so many people here rely on the food shelves. This is one way to buy and bully people into silence.

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These intermediaries protect their own comfort and influence while neighbors struggle and suffer the consequences of poorly-planned development. The situation gets worse year after year. The resentment builds, also over generations.

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At a public hearing about the Talon Mine in Blaine, the head of Mining Minnesota told a story about a "hypothetical" single mother in Aitkin County .... Trying to make ends meet at a kitchen table full of bills ... THINK ABOUT WHAT A MINING JOB COULD MEAN FOR HER, was the point of this public commentary. I thought to myself, how ironic, She is describing me, and my mother ... and just about every woman I know who grew-up and stayed in this region. The idea that we are all just sitting around, waiting for some mining jobs to save us ...

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I grew-up with a Grandmother who once wore a pair of earrings she'd made to a public hearing about a polluting project in our community, These earrings hung low to her shoulders, and were made of scraps of upholstery fabric that she'd embroidered with the words UNEDUCATED BITCH. She made them because someone in town — (a state representative, who coincidentally is still at all these public hearings, taking notes for his bosses Pete Stauber and Talon metals) told her that if she wanted to lead people, she needed to get "an education." (The education he was talking about had nothing to do with college ... women know when we're being reminded of our place.)

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Sometimes these folks are elected to public office with the money that comes through these intermediary groups, But a lot of the time, they hold no public office. They're appointed to boards, they run clubs, they lead businesses or nonprofit advocacy organizations — They're not all right-wingers either, But they protect a process that advances their own self-interest at the expense of others, and they threaten people in subtle ways if they speak too loud or with too much truth. No one will give you a job. No one will buy your produce, or plow your driveway in the wintertime. Your kids will be harassed and threatened at school. You will be harassed and threatened at work or in the grocery store, or behind your back.

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But most curious to me is the stories that get told about why this is justified, because "it's going to happen either way" and "they don't care about us." There's this pervasive, defeatist attitude — the corporations are gonna get away with it anyways. (They don't care about us, so why should we?) Why fight so hard and waste your time? Why let yourself believe that anything else is possible here? Think about what you could do with that money they're throwing around, or with the kind of political power that comes from playing their side!

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I've sat in some of those circles, and I understand the appeal. It sucks being this vigilant all the time, and maybe they are right, maybe it won't be so bad after all?

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I've also sat in circles with people who I disagree with on so many things, but who I know see this pattern just as clearly as I do, and are trying in their own way to defect from it, or upend it. The cracks are starting to show. But it's gonna take a lot more of us stepping up to make it clear we will not continue to enable this with our silence. It makes me nervous even telling these stories, but the point is that I don't see a way forward until we acknowledge that we can't just vote our way out of this mess.

Proposed Mining Projects

Shanai Matteson reports on a town hall meeting in Emily, MN

Tuesday night I attended a town hall meeting in Emily, MN, a very small town about 20 miles from my home near Palisade. The meeting was about the development of a manganese mine that doesn't just threaten the town's water sources and lakeside environment, the mineral deposit they want to mine is in the very middle of what everyone around here considers "the heart" of the community.

Mineral leases are complicated.

Most people don't realize that the person who "owns" land on the surface doesn't necessarily "own" the minerals beneath that land. (And this is treaty land, so there is much more to consider in this topic than I can include here).

Sometimes those minerals are controlled by, and will financially benefit the property owner ... but in a lot of cases, these are controlled by and benefit (in theory?) the State of Minnesota. (I say "in theory" because one could really debate the different benefits and burdens for Minnesota residents when we are permitting projects that pollute in perpetuity)

The point is that some of the mineral leases in Emily are controlled by the Minnesota DNR, but not all of them. There are residents in Emily that control mineral leases the mining companies really want to exploit, and these residents aren't rushing to sell out.

The auditorium was packed with people who seemed skeptical, but they were listening.

What I heard in the Q&A section of this Town Hall — which was BY FAR the most important part, and what most were there to engage with or witness — is that people in the town of Emily don't trust this mining company, Electric Metals (USA) and NorthStar Manganese.

They are also losing trust in the Minnesota DNR and other state regulators. This Town Hall did not seem to help.

People were there to ask questions and to share their concerns, but before we were invited to speak at an open microphone, we were given an hour of presentations by people who the mining company had invited to cover important topics, but which instead seemed to all be versions of a marketing pitch.

They had a geologist giving a Geology of the Emily Manganese Deposit 101 type presentation .... He works for a contractor that is being paid by the mining company to explore how valuable this deposit is.

They had a scientist talking about groundwater testing and the potential risks of drilling here. She works for Barr Engineering, a consultant for the mining company and other government and business clients.

They had the Executive Director of Mining Minnesota — a group that promotes sulfide mining — talking about Mining and the Environment.

And they had Joe Henderson from the MN DNR Mines & Minerals department talking about the process of regulating mines and mineral exploitation in Minnesota. He referenced the Rio Tinto - Kennecott - Talon Metals proposal in Tamarack a few times, showing a picture of one of their new drills,

He did not show any pictures (like those attached here) of the drilling fluid sumps and damages to wetlands that Talon and Rio Tinto-Kennecott have been creating in Tamarack over the past 20 years...

Especially in the last five years, when they were operating 5 drills here 24/7 — making miles and miles of underground borings into aquifers and bedrock, and leaving many of those borings unsealed.

It's not insignificant that Talon Metals was brought up several times on Tuesday night, they are just beginning the scoping and environmental impact assessment of that proposed mine, and public comment is open right now.

Several presenters even referenced Talon's plans to move their processing to North Dakota, or Michigan.

They referenced Eagle Mine (also in Michigan, also now owned by Talon Metals) to assuage concerns that were raised about how a mining project could transform the environment of this little town, and concerns that groundwater, lakes and rivers, and wild rice are at risk.

Our frontline rural communities are being sold a story about who we are, and who we can trust, by people who have financial interest in being given permission by our state government to disturb and pollute our home places.

It's happening in mining communities, and in those facing data centers, CAFOs, pipelines ....

We are invited to these public meetings, where we're subjected to marketing pitches before we're given a couple of minutes to summarize our concerns, and where those concerns and questions are often downplayed or dismissed.

When people in our communities object, especially Native people, they are treated as if they're misinformed, "just against progress," or worse — as a threat to public safety because they might protest — and many of those same characterizations get leveled at environmental & community activists, when we are also just people who live here and don't wanna see our kids and grandkids environment degraded for short-term gains, or for profits that never stay in our communities.

But the real threat is that corporations want something that doesn't really belong to them, and we are in the way. They didn't put those minerals there, they just have the financial backing (maybe) and the expertise (maybe) to take them — if they are permitted to do so — selling them to Tesla, or to overseas markets, knowing that it's our families and children who will bear the risks, and even those risks are unevenly distributed.

Native families and kids who depend on wild rice, fish, other foods and plant medicines that come from these treaty lands, were barely discussed by the panel in Emily. (Julie Lucas from Mining Minnesota did refer to "the people who these lands once belonged to" so there's that.) The mining company was emphatic that they were going to consider wild rice, and invite tribal engagement, but there was no mention that this is actually the legal responsibility of our government, not just something to work into a marketing pitch.

Several times, the folks from Electric Metals USA mentioned, "we won't be processing ore, or storing mining waste, here in Emily."

This is the same claim that Talon Metals (Rio Tinto) made a couple of years ago — saying to their investors: "We listened to the community, and this is what they told us they wanted."

Now, they are pitching a "mine in a box" — a teeny tiny thing, that they claim can be done without much impact at all! [ While also saying to their partners and investors — including Tesla, and the US Department of Defense — "This will be a 'mining district'"]

By claiming at that early stage — when there was no feasibility study of how it could even be accomplished — that they would not process or store waste here, they were able to avoid the scrutiny of our MN Department of Health on the impacts their sulfide mine and its waste would have on groundwater, and potentially drinking water wells as well as the issue of methylmercury in fish and those impacts on public health

Talon also received over $135 million dollars in Federal Government funding based on this claim.

At the town hall meeting in Emily, Brian Savage from Electric Metals answered a question from a skeptical resident, who pointed out that they are not in fact a mining company, they've never mined anything, they are developers and marketers ... "We plan to get that government money from the Department of Defense [like Talon did]"

Why is the federal government subsidizing companies that are putting our communities at great risk, and at the same time, firing the scientists and other regulators that are supposed to help determine if these projects can even meet legal standards?

Why is the DNR helping to market companies that are putting our natural resources and public health at risk, when they are the same agency that is tasked with protecting our natural resources by evaluating and permitting those same companies to destroy wetlands and to pollute our groundwater, lakes, and rivers?

Already, studies show that 1 in 10 babies born in the Lake Superior region (where there has been mining for taconite, and a lot of mining waste dumped into our waterways ... and where existing standards are not being enforced) 1 in 10 babies (!) are born with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.

Read that again.

Mercury at this level is a neurotoxin that measurably affects intelligence.

They are poisoning our children, to make a profit.

At this town hall meeting, people of Emily were not having it.

When it was Q&A time, their questions were well informed, and all of those who spoke at the microphone expressed frustration and distrust.

There is something these mining companies don't want you to know:

You can talk to people in other communities who've dealt with these companies and these processes.

We can visit with people in Michigan, Wisconsin, other places in Minnesota, or across the country.

There's a playbook to how these companies operate to try to get what some call "a social license."

When regulators, companies, lobbyists, elected officials, and the science and engineering contractors that work between them, are all hanging out, telling the same stories, you know you need to be especially diligent about paying attention.

A question to ask all our electeds and candidates, as well as voters: "What kind of regulatory envrironment are we going to permit? Is it really this one? The one that seems to be controlled by multinational bad actors and their partners in our state and county government?" It's time to get serious about defending our lands and waters, defending sovereignty for Native nations and people, who are the frontlines and the fiercest fighters for our mother earth, and also, defending the self-determination of local communities whose livelihoods and health are also at stake.