Nations should honor agreements by Winona LaDuke
Nations should honor agreements
The 1867 Treaty was intended to provide a secure homeland for the Anishinaabe people forever. The Treaty was signed by our leaders and by President Andrew Johnson.
Agreements should be honored by nations.
Nations should honor agreements
by Winona LaDuke.
Minnesota Legislature, Sen. Mary Kunesh introduced SF 3480 3480 which would return the 160,000-acre White Earth State Forest to the White Earth band of Anishinaabe. It follows a land return to the Lower Sioux in mid March and represents a way to begin healing the wounds of Minnesota’s past and comply with the law.
The 1867 Treaty was intended to provide a secure homeland for the Anishinaabe people forever. The Treaty was signed by our leaders and by President Andrew Johnson.
Agreements should be honored by nations.
The Treaty provides for many things: The 837,000 acres of land, maples, the wild rice, the 47 lakes, the lifeblood of our people and …
“... the lands so held by any Indian shall be exempt from taxation and sale for debt and shall not be alienated except with approval of the Secretary of Interior and in no case to any person not a member of the Chippewa ...” — Article 7 of the 1867 Treaty.
That is the law of the land.
Nations and political leaders should keep agreements.
That’s how we keep the peace.
That’s not what happened. Land was taken illegally and the United States and Minnesota did not do the right thing for over a century. And now the state is trying to make it right. At the Minnesota Legislature, Sen. Mary Kunesh introduced Sf 3480 which would return the 160,000-acre White Earth State Forest to the White Earth band of Anishinaabe. It follows a land return to the Lower Sioux in mid March and represents a way to begin healing the wounds of Minnesota’s past and comply with the law.
Mahnomen and Becker county lawmakers seemed confused when they testified at the state hearing. Sen. Paul Utke referred to the bill as a “land grab” and David Geray, a Mahnomen County commissioner, talked about being blindsided by the land transfer. “Mahnomen County is entirely within the reservation. We didn’t find out about this until we were down here.”
That’s sort of surprising considering that these are elected officials who should understand the law and history. Here is a bit of history. This land is called Indakiingimin, the very land to which we belong. It is all we have left, Iskongigen, Reservation, leftovers.
The White Earth Reservation was reserved under Treaty, to protect our vast pine forests, 47 lakes, maple trees, our wild rice, and our water. For that is the source of our lives.
Our land was coveted. Sen. Knute Nelson secured the passage of what was to be known as the Nelson Act in 1889, not only illegally annexing four townships from the Treaty protected lands, but also violating the Treaty by creating a system to divide the land allotments. That’s how the big pines were cut. Then came Moses Clapp, and Steenerson who attached riders to bills securing access to more land, violating the same Treaty, and creating the place for Mahnomen County. Literally, counties which are located on the White Earth Reservation carved themselves out of the Reservation illegally. Now that’s a land grab.
The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council provides this history:
The Dawes Act of 1887, Nelson Act of 1889 along with the Clapp Act of 1904 and Snyder Act of 1906, enabled the rapid division of the reservation and allotments were given to individuals of 80 acres to head of household and 40 acres each to their children. There were many schemes to defraud individuals and minors from their land. Around the turn of the century much of the original Reservation land was illegally taken from allottee or their heirs through tax forfeit, minor sales, full blood or administrative sales. The timber was sold and cut and much of the land quickly passed into non-Indian ownership.
There are many ways to steal land from Indian people, and most of them happened here on the White Earth Reservation. It was something like “Killers of the Flower Moon” land speculators, lumber companies, and thieves.
Some land is taken with a gun, some is taken by a pen. Three hundred white farmers suddenly became mixed-blood allottees, illegal tax forfeitures of tribal trust land, forced fee patents, minor sales, and more illegal full blood sales, pushed it further. These thefts were the subject of no less than 1,600 lawsuits, but these cases were blocked.
By 1910, the people had been devastated, three-quarters of the allotments had been lost, and the forest was falling. The president sent Warren Moorehead out to investigate. Whole families blinded by trachoma, and land speculators all around, tuberculosis spreading like wildfire as people lived in refugee camps. He found diseases and death everywhere. We were almost wiped out as a people. Moorhead received death threats for telling the truth and returned to Washington. None of that should have happened if nations kept agreements.
The White Earth people were made refugees in our own land. Between 1915 and 1930 most tribal members were forced to move off Reservation. We have been the poorest people in the state of Minnesota since that time.
There have been many lawsuits, but none stopped the theft until the Zay Zah Case in 1977 which was filed by Clearwater County against Zay Zah, or George Aubid. The Minnesota Supreme Court found that Clearwater County had illegally attempted to tax forfeit a tribal allotment.
Finally, someone stopped the land grab.
In 1983, there were only 54,125 acres in tribal hands, and 1,953 under allotment on the Reservation, representing 7% of the Reservation. The largest landowners on the Reservation are the federal state and county governments, holding one third of the Reservation.
What is right and just is the return of lands which were taken in violation of the 1867 Treaty. This bill represents a way toward justice without displacing a single non-Indian landholder, and upholds the Treaty responsibility of the U.S. government.
“We’ve managed these lands long before the inception of any of these counties,” Eugene Sommers, District 1 representative, says. “For them to question our competency in management of these resources is a big slap in the face. History is repeating itself.”
I want to personally invite county commissioners and all to Giiwedinong, the Treaty Rights History and Culture Museum in Park Rapids. Minnesota.
Knowledge of the law is better than ignorance of the law. And understanding history is a good way to begin to heal.
A column by Winona LaDuke published March 23, 2024 - Alexandria Echo Press
The latest bad idea: Huber Mill near Leech Lake Reservation
No one in the Walz administration thought to call Leech Lake and ask what they thought. The Leech Lake Tribal government learned about the project from a press release.
The latest bad idea: Huber Mill near Leech Lake Reservation
No one in the Walz administration thought to call Leech Lake and ask what they thought. The Leech Lake Tribal government learned about the project from a press release.
By Winona LaDuke
Out of the Deep South, a lumber company, Huber Manufacturing, is proposing what may be the largest oriented strand board (plywood) plant in the country. The Frontier plant would be built in Cohasset, juseast of Grand Rapids, and on Minnesota Power’s land, where the Boswell Energy Facility is located.
The era of coal is ending in a time of climate chaos and major innovations in renewables. Replacing the big polluter and employer, the Huber plant would go up less than a mile from the Leech Lake reservation. But no one in the Walz administration thought to call Leech Lake and ask what they thought. The Leech Lake Tribal government learned about the project from a press release.
That’s not the way it’s supposed to be in Minnesota. To be clear, Gov. Tim Walz signed the 2019 Executive Order l9-24 “affirming government to government relationship between Minnesota and Minnesota tribal nations, providing for consultation, coordination and cooperation.” The executive order is intended “to establish mutually respectful and beneficial relationships between the state and Minnesota tribal nations.”
Well, throw that one out the window.
What’s amazingly clear is that Walz did not conduct any consultation as required by his own executive order. Instead, the governor and the Legislature just started the cannonball rolling toward the forests of the north.
Huber Manufacturing hopes to build a 750,000-square foot facility, where 150 people could work and make industrial-sized construction panels. Sounds simple? Well, the Minnesota Legislature thought it sounded like a really good idea, so it gave $80 million in subsidies to this North Carolina-based company, told the City of Cohasset that it should be the responsible government unit, then gave the company an exemption from an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), saying that a simple Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) might be just fine. Minnesota’s hoping the deal would be sweet enough that Huber would pick Cohasset over competitors in other states.
Kind of sounds like Minnesota has become a very cheap date. And, for that much in state subsidies, it might be worth some vetting — like a proper EIS.
OSB = Healthy?
Oriented Strand Board, or OSB, is some important stuff to fast building. It’s sort of a sticky mess and has some toxic materials to hold the world together. Basically, since Paul Bunyan logged our massive pine forests, we now just mush up little stuff and glue it together with petrochemicals. That’s the Minnesota way.
The first oriented strand board was made by Blandin in Grand Rapids There was also an OSB plant in Deerwood, which made joists, operated initially by MacMillan Bloedel and then by Weyerhaeuser. Deerwood’s Trus Joist had a number of health-related concerns before the plant was closed, and the industry is generally pretty toxic to worker health. It turns out that chemicals like formaldehyde and others, combined with wood dust, aren’t good for you. OSB facilities closed during the financial collapse in 2008, and facing more changes and shrinking forests, the pulp and paper mills also experienced hard times. Tough sledding in the logging industry.
What about the trees?
At the heart of this development, it’s about the trees and the forests. A forest is a living ecosystem, timber resources are inanimate materials.
Those are profoundly two different world views which have been colliding in the forests of the north since before the l855 treaty. What’s clear is that Minnesota does not manage the forests sustainably. Even the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) knows that.
Twenty-eight DNR staff outlined their ecological concerns in a 2019 letter to Commissioner Sarah Strommen. According to an MPR report,
“the authors do not believe it is scientifically honest or transparent to say that the 10-year timber plan is ‘beneficial to wildlife.’”
The fact is that Minnesota’s forests are managed for aspen and deer. That’s not a diverse forest, that’s a monocrop. Loss of old growth and clearcutting destroys habitat for larger animals and destroys ecosystems. The DNR wildlife scientists felt the proposed 8.75 percent increase in harvest from state-managed lands would cut out biodiversity and habitat. There’s just not enough forests left to support mega projects like this one.
That 2019 information was before the Huber Plant proposal, which will be fed by these same forests. The Frontier OSB plant needs an estimated 400,000 cords of wood annually to sustain a 24-hour assembly. Huber wants to get that within a l00-mile radius from the project. By comparison, the Minnesota DNR in 2019 offered 875,000 cords from all state land. That logging impact circle includes the entire Leech Lake reservation, the Chippewa National Forest and a good portion of the White Earth and Red Lake reservations.
There are already two separate lumber plants on either side of the Leech Lake reservation. Recently the Leech Lake Nation voiced concerns about the lack of information provided in the EAW, noting in their initial comments, “most of the wood for this project will necessarily be harvested from the Leech Lake reservation or the l855 treaty territory.
The failure to analyze the woodshed based on feedstock quantities necessary sets the State upon a dangerous trajectory for forest health.”
“We find our medicines in mature forests, not early in the succession,” explained Ben Benoit with the Environmental Program for Leech Lake. “Protecting and restoring forest diversity is critical to preserving Anishinaabe lifeways in an ever-changing climate and world … tribal citizens rely on the forest as our teachings and culture is tied to natural cycles and diversity that is disrupted with timber industry focused management.”
In other words, you can’t make maple syrup in a clearcut.
Then there’s the little guys, like the long-eared bat or Myotis septentrionalis. They are endangered. There’s a long-eared bat nesting site right there by Cohasset, that is going to get creamed in construction. Bapakwaanaajiinh, the bat, is an epic character in Anishinaabe mythology, illustrating that mysterious and small creatures can change the world. This specific bat species also was impacted by the Line 3 project. That was one of the primary endangered species the pipeline rolled over. There’s only so many times you can knock out an endangered species and expect it to live.
The United Nations has reiterated that biodiversity matters to not only planetary health, but also human health. The reality is that mega projects are fragmenting forests and creating ecological havoc. Those same clearcuts make the forest damage more at risk in windstorms, which increase with climate change. It’s easy to see the wind shears along corridors like highways and pipelines. Protecting the integrity of the forest protects us all. Besides that, the Lorax lives in the forest.
Paul Bunyan was already here. There were once 75 million acres of contiguous forest in the region; most of them have been cut to build railroads, the cities of St. Paul, Duluth and more. The northern forests created empires — from the Congdon to the Pillsbury, Weyerhaeuser and more — all those empires born from these forests. Those companies are the actual names of the fictional Paul Bunyan. In the least, Bunyan needs to do something epic to reverse his legacy.
There is no sustainable harvest in the north woods, only a lot of aspen monocultures being cultivated by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. But that’s not a forest and that’s what the DNR Wildlife concerns are about. The Leech Lake tribal government has been working for decades on forest restoration outlining “desired vegetative conditions” and facing all of these logging interests, as well as a Chippewa National Forest which was carved out of the reservation, all impacting Indigenous land knowledge and care.
The time of Paul Bunyan is over.
Walz’s bad gambles — hemp’s saving grace?
“Very few opportunities come along where someone is looking to build a new plant,” Rep. Tom Bakk said, as he went to bat for $28.5 million in state subsidies for Huber.
That may be because it’s a bad idea. But that didn’t stop them.
“You have a company coming into Minnesota looking at our environmental laws and telling everyone, telling Minnesota Power, telling the Legislature, we’ll come in as long as you get rid of this one law for us,” noted Evan Mulholland, senior staff attorney for the environmental policy group MCEA. “And that just doesn’t sit right with us.”
As the Glasgow Climate conference came to an end in November, there was a greater than ever call to keep forests intact and cut carbon emissions. The Walz administration talked about the new plans for cars, but neglected to mention the big tar sands pipeline, and the new plans to clearcut the north for an out of state corporation. This fall, Walz talked about the clean car initiative, his new council on climate change, and then proposed to give away the northern forests with $80 million in subsidies from the state.
This administration could do a lot better, in fact, they could change the future.
Our Anishinaabe prophecies speak of this time and the choice of paths. It’s time for a real green path in Minnesota, not a scorched path. It’s time to grow back full forests, a wild rice economy and restore the north, not tear it further apart. That’s long-term sustainability. The Walz administration could learn from the Leech Lake Environmental program, and other tribes like Red Lake, about their world-class work to restore ecosystems and create green economies.
It may also be time for hemp wood — that’s all sorts of wood made from compressed hemp, stuck together with, well, soybeans. Can’t eat it, but you can make a lot out of it, including joists and something like OSB, made with hemp and soybeans. Besides that, hemp sequesters carbon faster than a forest, and has great adaptability. It takes about four months for hemp stalks to reach maturity, while it takes trees at least 20 years. Let’s take a break from the southern charm of Huber and look across the forests.
That’s where the wild things are and that’s where the bats live. And the Anishinaabe.
This is the only place we have, Huber can go find another forest.
Winona LaDuke is a Harvard-educated economist, environmental activist, author, hemp farmer, grandmother, and a two-time former Green Party vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader. She is also the executive director of the nonprofit, Indigenous-led environmental justice organization, Honor the Earth. She is the author of seven books, including her latest book, “To Be a Water Protector: Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers” (Fernwood Press/Columbia University), an expansive, provocative engagement with issues that have been central to her many years of activism, including seven years battling Line 3 — an Enbridge tar sands oil pipeline in northern Minnesota.
Welcome to the Deep North by Winona LaDuke
President Trump is coming to Bemidji Minnesota, a town between three large Anishinaabe reservations, Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake. A town which is the home to Bemidji State University, some stellar schools, and also some racism, big time. Beltrami County, is where Bemidji is located.
One thing for sure, a storm is brewing and change is here. In the time of the pandemic and societal change, there’s a way to hold on to old hatred and there’s a path towards reconciliation.
There are a lot of people who have hope and many of them hope to vote.
Water Protectors at the Enbridge Clearbrook Terminal 2019 on Indigenous People’s Day March.
Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather
Welcome to the Deep North
Winona LaDuke
President Trump is coming to Bemidji Minnesota, a town between three large Anishinaabe reservations, Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake. A town which is the home to Bemidji State University, some stellar schools, and also some racism, big time. Beltrami County, is where Bemidji is located. It’s also where former Blackduck Mayor, Rudy Patch, resigned after an infamous Facebook post about the George Floyd riots. This is where there are more Natives in jail, or who die from police per capita than anywhere else in rural Minnesota. This is the Deep North.
This is also a battleground for America’s future, where Republicans hope to wrest more power from a Democratic Governor, Tim Walz and his Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, the first Native woman in history to hold that position. There’s a hard push on the north country to turn Red, and there’s a grassroots movement which is pushing back.
Take Beltrami County
Tim Sumner is an incumbent running for County Commissioner, a Red Lake Tribal member. He along with fellow incumbent, Reed Olson, were the only two county commissioners who opposed Beltrami County’s January 2020 resolution. In January, the county became the first in the state and second in the nation to vote against allowing the placement of refugees in its community.
"As a representative of my part of the county, and considering the current state of affairs in our county, I don't feel it's prudent to bring refugees to our county," said Beltrami County Commissioner Jim Lucachick, "when we need to take care of all the issues we have now." County Commissioner Tim Sumner had a different position: "I think most of the people here today are re-settlers. It just seems un-American to me to say that 'You're not welcome.’"
Roseau County, just to the north, passed a February resolution designating the county a “Second Amendment Dedicated County,” more commonly known as a Second Amendment “sanctuary county.” That is sanctuary for firearms. Roseau county joined more than 400 such communities nationally to adopt this resolution, the first in Minnesota. The resolution notes, that the county “wishes to express opposition to any law in the future, beyond existing laws to date, that would unconstitutionally restrict the rights of the citizens of Roseau County to keep and bear arms.”
It’s the deep north, and the tensions are rising.
Water Protectors were met by strong harassment (Pro Line 3 MN4L3 group members) at the Enbridge Clearbrook Terminal 2019 on Indigenous People’s Day March. Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather
Then there’s the pipeline -- that’s Line 3, the largest tar sands pipeline from Canada, one of the few remaining pipeline projects proposed, in a tottering fossil fuel market. That’s from Enbridge, the third largest corporation in Canada.
That pipeline has met steady opposition from the over 63,000 people who testified against the line in seven years of hearings, as compared to only 3,000+ in favor. This summer Enbridge ramped up its bogus Minnesotans for Line 3 marketing campaign as the state Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Attorney General joined citizens to oppose the pipeline project in the state Court of Appeals along with several environmental groups. Enbridge failed to persuade the state that their pipeline was a good idea, so they moved to the Republican legislature to start punishing political appointees. In a swipe at Governor Walz, Line 3 cost Steve Kelley his role as DOC Commissioner when the Republican-led Minnesota Senate canned him instead of confirming him for the job, after being joined by two longtime northern Minnesota Democrats, Tom Bakk and David Tomassoni.
Militarizing the North
In the meantime, more military and police equipment are moving into the north country, much of it to be paid for by the Enbridge Company, further militarizing the Deep North.
Menagha is a town of about 1,300 people. Poor by economic standards, rich in Finlanders. In December of 2019, Menahga Police Chief Gunderson reported to the City Council that, with regards to Line 3, they were “not sure what to expect but needed riot gear including helmets. Masks shields and less lethal munitions…. such as tasers and modern stuns (December 4, 2019 Menahga Messenger).
Meanwhile, the town to the north of Menagha, Park Rapids (approximately 3,700 people), is also gearing up for a Line 3 battle. At the Hubbard County Commissioner’s meeting, the report came in: “Enbridge is going to start Line 3, hopefully, in 2020, and I know we’ve budgeted overtime,” Kay Rave, Hubbard County Auditor explained at a Commissioners Meeting.
“The sheriff’s department has been training for that. Doing our best to prepare for the unknowns that come with the building of Line 3.”
In July, a new armored personnel carrier arrived to stay in Park Rapids, another is rumored to be stationed in Menagha.
And then there’s Duluth. The first big wave of riot gear came to Duluth in 2019, about $140,000 of it, with a lot of opposition from church groups and local citizens.
Now, honestly, until George Floyd’s death, there hadn’t been a riot in Duluth since the 1920 lynching of three Black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, by a white mob estimated to be between l,000 and l0,000 people (apparently, they were sort of bad at counting in those days). That was the last riot in Duluth.
This story doesn’t start here.
It has deep origins.
A Hundred Years of Prison
The reality is that Native people have been treated poorly by the state of Minnesota, and remain prisoners of legal, political, economic, and social policies which are discriminatory.
Native people have the highest rates of incarceration, seven times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Natives. Representing 7% of the prison population, we represent one percent of the population. We spend a lot of time in prison.
Native American people make up 1.4% percent of the general Minnesota population; Minnesota prisons have a range of 7% to 22% percent Native American offenders serving felonies. 44% of prisoners reoffend and return within the first year to prison for minor charges.
We also end up at the hands of excessive force. Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison held some mid-December 2019 meetings in Bemidji on ways to reduce deadly force encounters between law enforcement and local residents. Ellison told the hearing that a large number of the deadly force encounters occur in greater Minnesota. More than one has occurred in Beltrami County, where in 2018 a Bemidji Police officer and a Beltrami County Sheriff's deputy shot and killed 34-year-old Vernon May of Red Lake during a traffic stop.
At the hearing, White Earth tribal member Nicole Buckanaga talked about the Beltrami County Jail, which is facing two wrongful-death lawsuits, both Native men. In the death of Vernon May, Beltrami County Attorney David Hanson declined to charge the officer, Bidal Duran, and the deputy, Brandon Newhouse.
“There's no trust to be regained; there's none to be restored. There wasn't in the beginning," Renee Gurneau, a Red Lake tribal mother said. “Just because things happened 200 years ago does not mean they didn’t affect us two minutes ago,” Buckanaga added.
“We’re here to discuss the brutal encounters that we have with police. But we cannot ignore the brutal encounters that we have with the system itself because those police get us to those judges. Well, those judges are throwing the book at us; they’re keeping us in jail. They’re putting barrier upon barrier in front of us.”
The President’s Revealing Attachment to Political and Historical Hot Spots
It seems the President is going for some kind of record with his Bemidji visit September 18.
The Question?
How many political hot spots you can hit and insult people? Particularly people of color that is. The president held a campaign rally in Tulsa the day after Juneteenth celebrations. Tulsa was the home of the former Black Wall Street, until the May 1921 riots. Trump’s campaign was, not surprisingly, met with opposition from Black leaders. Then there was the Fourth of July rally, unmasked at Mt. Rushmore, a place vilified in the history of this country for the theft of the Black Hills.
To the music of the Seventh Cavalry, Trump held a campaign rally.
NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.
That was pretty much directly targeted at the Lakota community, many of whom descended from survivors of the Seventh Cavalry massacre at Wounded Knee and elsewhere. Trump’s actions resulted in the arrest of 20 Lakota Land defenders. Nick Tilsen, NDNz Collective Director is facing l5 years in felony charges, while other land defenders were charged with misdemeanor offenses.
“Every generation since the land was taken has fought to get it back, and many of us, including myself, grew up around this movement to get our land back,” Tilsen explained.
In an effort to keep his state safe, Governor Walz discouraged Trump from coming to the George Floyd Memorial in Minneapolis, calling it a bad idea. Many viewed it as Trump’s attempt to campaign using the Floyd Memorial as a backdrop.
Bemidji is, perhaps, Trump’s response.
Voting Counts
Native youth will lead . . . New registered voters in Becker County, Minnesota. Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather
Voting isn’t the easiest in the north, and the Trump administration is pushing to restrict those rights to vote. Most tribal members use a postal service to vote absentee, and most polling stations on the reservations are located in non-Indian township halls, where tribal members have to literally drive through a set of Keep America Great bumper stickers to vote. On and adjacent to the reservation, the color line is also a political line.
The lines are getting sharper.
As November closes in, many people feel intimidated by aggressive pro-Trump supporters. More than a few are skeptical of the political system. That combination has allowed a set of far-right Republicans to retain seats in the north, from Paul Gazelka and Paul Utke to Steve Green. All of those incumbents have supported Line 3, more militarization of the north, and opposed treaty rights and water protection promoted by the tribes.
Native people are running for office at higher levels than ever before, and despite voting challenges, there is a big push to Get out the Vote. Bemidji City Council candidate Audrey Thayer, an enrolled member of the White Earth reservation won 51% of the vote in the democratic primary in Bemidji, and Alan Roy, running against Paul Utke received a warm Democratic support in August.
More will come.
In turn, over the past decades, the tribes have been pushing back, harder and harder, with both US Supreme Court wins on the treaty rights ( the l999 Mille Lacs decision that recognized Ojibwe treaty rights within the l837 treaty boundary), agreements on the l854 and more recognition of treaty rights in the l855 and l863 territories ,tribes exercising jurisdiction over citizens, water quality, and most recently the rights of Wild Rice, or Manoomin.
This past summer, new military equipment arrived in the Deep North, and with it, new tensions. To be clear, this is not a Native/non-Native conflict. But in the times of a pandemic, of economic crises, of political crises, and a collapsing of the fossil fuel industry, the desperation is growing. This is in many ways about the future of the North Country, and there are many forces at work.
We will see how it goes with Donald Trump and the characters in the Deep North. One thing for sure, a storm is brewing and change is here. In the time of the pandemic and societal change, there’s a way to hold on to old hatred and there’s a path towards reconciliation.