KEWEENAW BAY — After years of uncertainty, Dione Price hopes her community may win a long battle to clean up century-old mining waste. Years of advocacy by partners including the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, where Price is environmental health manager for the tribal government, have resulted in a new plan to clean up the notorious Gay stamp sands, a waste pile visible from space that is smothering critical fish habitat in Lake Superior.
And 40 miles downstream, where yet more mining waste has washed ashore on the tribe’s reservation, native plants are eking out an existence on a scarred landscape thanks to the tribe’s habitat restoration efforts. “It’s promising,” Price said, a testament to how far the UP has come toward healing environmental harms caused by the mining industry.
But the two sites are also prime examples of why tribal officials are skeptical about the wave of prospectors combing the UP today in anticipation of a new mining boom. As the EV transition fuels renewed demand for the nickel and copper buried beneath the peninsula, mining companies say they aim to do right by communities harmed by the industry’s past, particularly tribes whose fishing and hunting culture makes them vulnerable to industrial pollution and habitat destruction, and whose sovereign status gives them unique legal standing in environmental disputes.
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