In 1923, north central Wisconsin was altered by the damming of the Chippewa River.  Fifteen thousand acres of forests, ten lakes and the wild rice beds of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians (LCO) were sacrificed to hydroelectric generation.  Even today, tribal members recall the circumstances of forced relocation and the obliteration of their burial grounds.

In the spring of 1999, LCO learned of plans to build a 250-mile-long, 345-kilovolt transmission line form Duluth, Minn., to Wausau, Wisc.  Allete Energy of Duluth and the Public Service Company of Wisconsin, the project's builders, proposed several routes, one of which crossed the reservation.

Neither proponent contacted LCO directly. At the same time, landowners and environmentalists in the affected counties became aware of a marketing alliance between Allete Energy and Manitoba Hydro.  Manitoba's Lake Winnipeg Regulation and Nelson-Churchill River Diversion is one of North America's largest hydro projects, producing enough electricity to supply the province of Manitoba as well as utility customers in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Minnesota.  Concerned that the Duluth-Wausau line would become the conduit to ship Manitoba Hydro's cheap electricity to lucrative markets east and south of Wisconsin, northern residents began to organize.

"We all have different worries about this line," explained Colette Wolf, who is LCO's representative to Save Our Unique Lands, Inc., the grassroots group that has formed to advocate alternatives to the transmission project.

For 20 years, cancer levels on the reservation have been high.  "We suspect it's related to ELF [extremely low frequency]," said Michael Isham Jr., vice chairman of the LCO Tirbal Governing Board.  "There is this extremely low frequency facility just east of our reservation, built by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s to communicate with American submarines throughout the world.  We're bombarded by electro-magnetic pollution.  We don't need a
transmission line to our west."

Wolf and Isham collaborated to educate LCO about siting the line and explained the likely connection to Manitoba, where five Cree communities reside along the Nelson River.  "Obviously our hydro history helped us quickly comprehend what is happening a thousand miles away," said Art Tainter, a member of the LCO Tribal Governing Board.  "We are especially sympathetic to the plight of Pimicikamak Cree Nation at Cross Lake."

PCN, as it is called, is located a few miles from the control gate that releases water stored in Lake Winnipeg into the Nelson River hydro system.  The water fluctuations cause continual bank and island erosion and disrupt travel by boat and snowmobile, making it difficult for trappers and fishermen to feed their families.  The community experiences some of the higest rates of suicide of any aboriginal reserve in Canada.  Its unemployment rate hovers at 95 percent.

In September 1999, LCO became the first American tribe to pass a resolution supporting the Pimicikamak Crees.  The resolution calls for greatly increased investments by private, public and tribal entities in energy conservation and genuinely renewable energy sources in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest, to displace the need to purchase additional electricity from Manitoba Hydro.  It also opposes building transmission lines in the territory ceded to the Chippewa in the treaties of 1836, 1837 and 1842.

LCO Tribal Governing Board members took the resolution to the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, Inc, and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.  Debate focused on whether the transmission line would also provide power to operate a proposed sulfide mine at the headwaters of the Wolf River, home of the Sokaogon Band of Chippewa at Mole Lake.  The river flows south through the reservation of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. Both organizations unanimously upheld the resolution.

"We are the ones who have to bear the burdens and we are the ones who should decide and we say egaweeni -- No -- to the proposed line," said Vice Chair Isham.

A decision by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is expected later this year.
 

  This article by Ann Stewart first appeared under the title,"Cross-Border Indigenous Alliance Fights Manitoba Hydro Project" in Native Americas: Hemispheric Journal of Indigenous Issues, Cornell University, spring 2001.