Environmental Injustice
At a March 1999 ceremony on the northwest shore of Sandy Lake, Mille Lacs' Jim Clark (right) shares a moment with Archie McGeshick, Lac Vieux Desert Band. Ceremony leader, Tobosanakwut Kinew, smudges a string of spirit sticks, which were later released into the Sandy River below the Army Corps of Engineers dam. (COR/Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife photo
Talon Metals Tamarack Project poses potential high risk to manoomin
By VIVIAN LaMOORE, INAAJIMOWIN EDITOR
The landscape of our environment is vastly changing. Scientists around the world continue to sound the alarm that climate change is the single greatest threat to human health in the history of the planet. As the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas concentrations rise around the world, so does the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. The effects of climate change are of great importance to Mille Lacs Band tribal leaders. Protecting Mother Earth is a priority, a duty, and a challenge. Mille Lacs tribal leaders are not willing to sacrifice their duty of protecting the land, the water, and the resources provided to them, no matter the cost.
“We are Anishinaabe,” said Kelly Applegate, Commissioner of Natural Resources for the Mille Lacs Band. “The Creator put all of these gifts here for us and we are to care for these resources and leave them untouched or nourished so our future generations can enjoy the things that we enjoy today and that our ancestors have enjoyed for generations before us.”
That spirit is at the heart of Band leaders’ concern related to the proposed Tamarack Mine. Talon Metals Corporation, a base metals company headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, has proposed a joint venture with international conglomerate Rio Tinto on the Tamarack Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Project located in Tamarack, Minnesota. The proposed mine would source nickel resources believed to be 800 to 2,000 feet below the earth’s surface. Talon Metals' website claims it has the ability and resources to mine nickel at the Tamarack Mine with a small footprint in an “environmentally friendly and socially responsible way” and that “every step is carefully controlled.”
Demand for green solutions
As our world focuses on addressing climate change, there is increasing pressure for American automobile manufacturers to produce electric vehicles (EVs). As such, demand for manufacturing rechargeable batteries to power EVs has skyrocketed. Nickel is one of the core elements currently used to produce these rechargeable batteries.
However, nickel mining has been shown to cause irreversible damage to the surrounding environment and water. The proposed Tamarack Mine is only 1.3 miles away from Mille Lacs Band housing in the Round Lake Neighborhood of the Minnewawa. Round Lake itself is much closer, bordering some sites Talon Metals could have access to for mining activities. The Round Lake Neighborhood of the Minnewawa community and Big Sandy community have high water connectivity, including wetlands, watersheds including the St. Croix and Mississippi, and several lakes, rivers, and streams.
“These areas are really close to the proposed mine,” Applegate said. “When nickel is extracted from the Earth, it produces waste stream called tailings. When tailings react with water, they create sulfuric acid. Which is essentially the same chemical composition as battery acid. It is highly reactive and is not something you can easily neutralize. Once it is in the environment, it is extremely toxic. The way these wetlands function, it is a delicate ecosystem. It is an environmental Jenga puzzle that builds up on itself and if you jeopardize the water — the base of everything — everything else can crumble at the top and the ecosystem can fall apart.”
Mille Lacs Band government leaders are poised to protect their resources.
“Our duties as a government are to protect our people and put it forward through law, policy, and legislation, Applegate said. “We will use those tools to combat this and argue against it. Yet at the same time keeping our traditional ways of being close to the land and as protectors of our people, our culture, our area, and our resources.”
Talon Metals has positioned the proposed Tamarack Mine as an opportunity to domestically mine and produce nickel. It has obtained mining leases to 31,000 acres in Aitkin County and is currently drilling for core samples within this leased area. Before the company can begin operating the proposed Tamarack Mine, it must submit detailed mining plans to the State of Minnesota for environmental review. While this process can take years, Talon has announced its intention to begin operations by 2026.
Applegate said this proposed mining project, should they succeed in obtaining permits, is an “environmental injustice.”
“The proposed mine is yet another example of an Indian tribe dealing with the proposal of the removal of resources. There have been a lot of assaults on the way we live on the earth,” Applegate said.
Manoomin is sacred
The wetlands and lakes in District II near the proposed mining site, such as Rice Lake, are rich manoomin (wild rice) beds and traditional ricing areas for Band members. Manoomin is the heart and soul of the Anishinaabe migration story.
“Our ancestors were told to go where the food grew on water,” Applegate said. “We found that food that grew on water to be manoomin. It is sacred.”
Band members have harvested rice in that area for generations. Respected Band Elder Brenda Biidwaawegiizhigokwe Moose, a District Court Associate Justice learned to harvest manoomin when she was 12 years old. Ricing has been a family tradition for her family for generations as well as a tradition for many Mille Lacs Band families. (See her story in the October 2014 issue of the Inaajimowin.)
“We rely on the environment to be clean and usable for traditional ways. Our interaction with the natural world is who we are. It is in our identity to care for our Mother Earth. We are taught that throughout our lives,” Applegate said. “We don’t believe that mining is ever going to be an environmentally responsible process, even for producing electric vehicle batteries. At that point we are just swapping one form of pollution for another.”
Applegate notes that mining is not the only option to power EV battery production. Similar outcomes can be found through sodium-ion batteries, harnessing the power of hemp, or mining landfills to extract the nickel and copper that has already been discarded and buried in the ground. These solutions are much safer for surrounding land and water.
The nearby watersheds, high-water table, and the water-rich resources of the proposed Tamarack Mine site are of great concern to the Band. Any contamination to the nearby wetlands could have a devastating effect.
“The high-water table is interconnected with wetlands, ponds, streams, lakes, beds of cattails, beds of manoomin, and tamarack bogs; it is all connected,” Applegate explained. “And the effects could extend beyond our community. We have the St. Croix and Mississippi watersheds that all of our waters connect to. A potential mining accident could result in toxins getting into the watershed and make their way down the St. Croix, impacting drinking water and recreational water, making the way down that side of the Twin Cities, then you’ve got the danger of it spilling into the Mississippi watershed leading to the ocean. That makes it a national concern.”
Plans for processing
On October 19, 2022, Talon was awarded a $114 million grant from the Department of Energy to go towards "project construction and execution costs" for a minerals processing facility in North Dakota. The North Dakota facility would process nickel from the Tamarack Mine and other potential nickel sources in North America. Talon claims that “removing the processing facilities from the Tamarack Mine site in Minnesota significantly reduces land disturbance and the scope of environmental review and permitting.”
An acquisition for the North Dakota processing site is currently under negotiation for a brownsfield site (land previously used for industrial or commercial purposes with known or suspected pollution including soil contamination due to hazardous waste) in Mercer County, North Dakota.
Despite Talon’s decision to move nickel processing operations out of Minnesota, the mine still presents environmental risks from both the mining process itself and transporting tailings via truck and railway to North Dakota.
“Talon Metals’ announcement that it intends to move components of its nickel processing operations to North Dakota acknowledges the risks that this proposed mine poses to our community and land,” said Melanie Benjamin, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Chief Executive. “We still assert that mining is not the only option to source the nickel needed to produce electric vehicle batteries, and do not believe that it should ever be the first option. A change in location does not eliminate our continuing concerns about the impact that a nickel mine, including its extraction and transportation activities, will have on the environment, surrounding communities, and our Band's cultural practices.”
“Talon Metals still has not provided data to verify its claims of experience with responsible mining practices,” Benjamin said. “It has not yet revealed its mining plan details. It has not yet submitted an Environmental Review. It has not yet applied for or received a permit to develop the Tamarack Mine. Accordingly, we caution against advancing plans without proper due diligence and full documentation. We will not tolerate any risks to our land, water, wild rice, or people.”
Talon’s claims of “new” and “safer” technology are familiar to the Mille Lacs Band. Enbridge boasted that its Line 3 project was the most studied pipeline project in state history and the result of “exhaustive scientific review exceeding legal and regulatory requirements” that was “developed and executed with the most state-of-the-art approach to design, construction, and environmental management."
Yet Enbridge repeatedly violated water quality regulations and requirements that damaged and polluted the environment during construction. In October 2022, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency announced that Enbridge has been ordered to pay $3.5 million in fines and $7.5 million in other penalties to go towards "payments, environmental projects, and financial assurances from Enbridge.”
“We don’t want to be part of a grand experiment,” Applegate said. “If these new technologies work, prove it to us. Where is the data? Where are the scientific studies that show that there will be no environmental harm? We haven’t seen any of that yet. Until the scientific data is provided to us, we are going to be very uncomfortable. We oppose pollution. We oppose trading the benefits of one pollution for another pollution.”
Tribal government officials, including the DNR, are working to combat the risk presented by the proposed Tamarack Mine in partnership with federal and state agencies and legal resources.
Applegate anticipates that this will be a continuing effort for several years. Updates will be provided for Band members as this issue moves forward.