Dozens of heav­i­ly armed Police and State Troop­ers have raid­ed the peace­ful defend­ers camp at Eagle Rock in Michi­gan’s Upper Penin­su­la; “crush­ing” the month-long effort to pro­tect the sacred site from a con­tro­ver­sial sul­fide mine.

Raid at Eagle Rock; Two campers arrest­ed, camp destroyed

BIG BAY, Mich. – The defend­ers of sacred Eagle Rock sat in a cir­cle and wept as they were sur­round­ed by dozens of heav­i­ly armed state and local police offi­cers who raid­ed the Eagle Rock encamp­ment the morn­ing of May 27 arrest­ing two campers at the request of Ken­necott Eagle Min­er­als, who wast­ed no time destroy­ing the month-old camp to make way for their nick­el and cop­per mine.

Wit­ness­es say there were about six peo­ple at Eagle Rock when police moved in includ­ing four campers who had spent the night and two sup­port­ers who arrived with a warn­ing the raid was immi­nent. Armed with high-pow­ered rifles, Michi­gan State Police and mine secu­ri­ty could be seen atop Eagle Rock scan­ning the vast Yel­low Dog Plains with binoc­u­lars appar­ent­ly look­ing for tres­passers.

Two hand­cuffed campers, who refused to leave when ordered by police, were tak­en away by sheriff’s deputies and dri­ven near­ly one hour to the Mar­quette Coun­ty Jail and were released on bond. Arrest­ed were Keweenaw Bay Indi­an Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers Chris Chosa, 28, and Char­lotte Loons­foot, 37, both of Bara­ga, Mich.

Loons­foot was one of three women who set up the encamp­ment April 23 protest­ing the arrest three days ear­li­er of envi­ron­men­tal­ist Cyn­thia Pry­or and hop­ing to pro­tect Eagle Rock from the Eagle Project nick­el and cop­per mine. Despite fed­er­al treaties that allow Ojib­wa to hunt, fish and gath­er on the Yel­low Dog Plains, the state of Michi­gan leased the land to Ken­necott to open a sul­fide mine. The mine por­tal is planned near the front of Eagle Rock and the tun­nel will trav­el under­neath the rock.

“Today, we got a mes­sage in camp that police were on their way,” said non-Native camper Cather­ine Park­er of the warn­ing from two mem­bers of the Yel­low Dog Water­shed Pre­serve who arrived short­ly before police. “Char­lotte and Chris had no inten­tion of leav­ing vol­un­tar­i­ly.”

Park­er said the Eagle Rock defend­ers wept for the land as they sat in a cir­cle.

“There were a lot of tears and pas­sion­ate remarks because the peo­ple have come to care a lot about each oth­er out here,” said Park­er of Mar­quette, Mich. “We have all been work­ing togeth­er, Native Amer­i­cans and whites to pro­tect some­thing that is tremen­dous­ly impor­tant to us.”

After police arrived, “we stayed as long as we could, we kept ask­ing to stay with our friends (Chosa and Loons­foot),” said Park­er, wip­ing away a tear. “We sat down with them repeat­ed­ly, we were pushed ver­bal­ly numer­ous times by law enforce­ment.”

“It’s break­ing my heart,” said a cry­ing Park­er as she wit­nessed heavy equip­ment roar­ing up the entrance to Eagle Rock. “This mine is not going to per­form (safe­ly) as they say it will. What is going to hap­pen if the mine col­laps­es into the Trout Salmon Riv­er?”

Police from sev­er­al agen­cies “lit­er­al­ly sur­round­ed us in a big cir­cle,” said Kalvin Hartwig, a mem­ber of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippe­wa who spent the night of May 26 at Eagle Rock but was not arrest­ed after agree­ing to leave the prop­er­ty with his car.

When police arrived, “three of us and two vis­i­tors were down by the sacred fire and anoth­er one of our campers (Char­lotte Loons­foot) was up on the hill fast­ing,” Hartwig said. “I think this whole sit­u­a­tion is pret­ty sad.

“The water and this land is at-risk. These peo­ple (Ken­necott) are here ille­gal­ly about to destroy it.”

Accord­ing to the Save The Wild UP Web site, about 20 police cars were sent and warned to expect a riot that nev­er occurred. Many sup­port­ers and the media rushed to the scene after hear­ing the Pow­ell Town­ship emer­gency per­son­nel dis­patched with instruc­tions to stage at the main entrance to the mine includ­ing an ambu­lance and fire trucks. No injuries were report­ed.

Atop a pole at the entrance to the camp, a lone eagle feath­er flut­tered in the dusty wind as heavy equip­ment moved in. Mine offi­cials doused the grand­fa­ther fire, uproot­ed the Eagle Rock Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, removed two flags from atop Eagle Rock and bull­dozed the camp.

Deputies blocked the dusty, remote, sea­son­al Triple A Road at the mine entrance but allowed the media and campers to walk the three-quar­ters of a mile to the for­mer entrance to the camp that was blocked by heavy machin­ery as mine employ­ees erect­ed a met­al cyclone fence. The media was not allowed to see the remains of the encamp­ment.

“They are putting up a fence and they are wreck­ing our gar­den we plant­ed,” said Gabriel Caplett, who has post­ed dai­ly updates about the campers activ­i­ties on the Stand for the Land Blog and has writ­ten count­less sto­ries about the fight to stop the mine since it was announced in 2004. “They are putting out the sacred fire” that has burned since the first night.

There was no word on what hap­pened to the tents and a large cache of food and oth­er sup­plies donat­ed by sup­port­ers. About 10 campers spent the night of May 25 at Eagle Rock, but sev­er­al left to pre­pare for activ­i­ties planned at the rock for Memo­r­i­al Day week­end.

Two non-Native campers, not present for the raid, broke into tears while walk­ing to Eagle Rock.

“It’s heart­break­ing, it’s real­ly dis­con­cert­ing to feel the rights of the cor­po­ra­tions have been put above and beyond the rights of the peo­ple,” said Amy Conover of Mar­quette, Mich. When politi­cians “get into pow­er they don’t act on behalf of the peo­ple, they act on behalf of the mon­ey.”

A Detroit native attend­ing nurs­ing school in Mar­quette said she “can’t under­stand how hard­ened the hearts have become of the peo­ple who are doing this.”

“To not feel how wrong it actu­al­ly is – is a very scary thing,” said Lau­ra Nagle. “The police offi­cer said this is a ‘bum­mer’ this was hap­pen­ing, it is not a bum­mer, it is a cat­a­stro­phe, a tragedy and a mis­for­tune for us all. This can still be stopped.”

May 23, 2010

It’s been exact­ly one month to the day since a group of Kayapo set up a fer­ry block­ade across the Xin­gu Riv­er in an ongo­ing protest against the con­tro­ver­sial Belo Monte hydro dam.

The Kayapo were dis­patched to the site on April 22, the same day Brazil’s gov­ern­ment grant­ed out rights to build the dam

Sad­ly, the effort has received lit­tle media cov­er­age since then, even with a con­stant ref­er­ence to celebri­ty activists Sting and James Cameron.

Nev­er­the­less, as the front line effort heads into its sec­ond month, the Kayapo warn that they have no inten­tion of back­ing down unless the gov­ern­ment can­cels the project.

The Kayapo Continue Blockades in Protest of the Belo Monte Dam

by Inter­na­tion­al Rivers and Ama­zon Watch

For Imme­di­ate Release
May 21, 2010

The Kayapo Continue Blockades of Amazon Highway for the 28th Straight Day in Protest of the Belo Monte Dam
Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples Vow to Block Dam Construction or “Die Fighting for our Rights”

Piaraçu, Xin­gu Nation­al Park, Brazil — A group of Kayapo indige­nous peo­ple led by Chief Megaron Txukar­ramãe have been blockad­ing the Xin­gu Riv­er cross­ing of the BR-80 — a major Ama­zon high­way in Mato Grosso State — since April 23 in protest of the gov­ern­men­t’s plans to build the mas­sive Belo Monte Dam. Dozens of Kayapo war­riors have been block­ing the fer­ry cross­ing over the Xin­gu Riv­er for four weeks and are deter­mined to remain there. Their actions have dis­rupt­ed a major trans­porta­tion artery for com­mer­cial goods in the region.

In a state­ment issued from the block­ade, Chief Megaron referred to Pres­i­dent Lula as “ene­my num­ber one” to Brazil’s indige­nous peo­ples, and vowed to main­tain the block­ade until Belo Monte is can­celed or “die fight­ing for our rights.”

Chief Megaron has been joined in these protests by Kayapo Chief Raoni Metuk­tire, an emblem­at­ic leader for over 20 years of indige­nous resis­tance to the Brazil­ian gov­ern­men­t’s plans to dam the Xin­gu Riv­er. In a May 1st inter­view with the French chan­nel TF1, Chief Raoni said “I have asked my war­riors to pre­pare for war and I have spo­ken of this with oth­er tribes from the Upper Xin­gu. We will not let them [build this dam].”

Lead­ers of the Arara, Xipa­ia and Juruna indige­nous peo­ples of the Low­er Xin­gu echo the vocif­er­ous oppo­si­tion of the Kayapo to the Belo Monte Dam, and have also vowed to lay down their lives to stop the project, which would destroy their com­mu­ni­ties and liveli­hoods. “We are firm in this strug­gle, and con­tin­ue more strong and deter­mined than ever to stop Belo Monte,” said the leader Shey­la Juruna. Attempts to stop the Belo Monte Dam became known around the world last month when film­mak­er James Cameron and mem­bers of the cast of Avatar joined protests in Brasil­ia and vis­it­ed vil­lages on the Xin­gu Riv­er and its trib­u­taries to hear about the plight of the region’s indige­nous peo­ple.

Slat­ed to be the 3rd largest hydro­elec­tric project in the world, Belo Monte would divert over 80 per­cent of the Xin­gu River’s flow through arti­fi­cial canals, flood­ing over 500 sq km of rain­for­est while dry­ing out a 100 km stretch of the riv­er known as the “Big Bend,” which is home to hun­dreds of indige­nous and river­ine fam­i­lies. Though sold to the pub­lic as “clean ener­gy,” Belo Monte would gen­er­ate an enor­mous amount of methane, a green­house gas 20 times more potent than car­bon diox­ide.

Despite legal injunc­tions against the pro­jec­t’s auc­tion, the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment announced that the auc­tion’s win­ning con­sor­tium, “Norte Ener­gia,” would pro­ceed with plans to dam the Xin­gu Riv­er. Pres­i­dent Lula’s insis­tence that the project move for­ward at all costs — in spite of seri­ous social, envi­ron­men­tal and finan­cial con­cerns, as well as a mas­sive local and inter­na­tion­al out­cry — con­tin­ues to be met with fierce denounce­ments from indige­nous peo­ple of the Xin­gu Basin.

“The destruc­tion that would be caused by the mas­sive Belo Monte Dam in the glob­al­ly essen­tial Ama­zon Basin would have world­wide ram­i­fi­ca­tions that can’t yet be ful­ly com­pre­hend­ed. Indige­nous peo­ple are deter­mined to dis­rupt the ‘busi­ness as usu­al’ mod­el of destruc­tive devel­op­ment projects that ruin the envi­ron­ment and their tra­di­tion­al ways of life,” said Atossa Soltani of Ama­zon Watch. “Indige­nous groups from the Xin­gu Basin have sent the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment a clear and resound­ing mes­sage that they will not allow the Belo Monte Dam to move for­ward. A Brazil­ian and inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of orga­ni­za­tions and social move­ments stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with these groups, and is mobi­liz­ing fur­ther social and legal actions.”