By John Saari
June 13, 2010
Civil disobedience is commonly associated with historical struggles for basic human rights, a citizen recourse in situations where government has gone badly off course.
After Cynthia Pryor’s arrest near Eagle Rock, it is not surprising that some have linked her name with Rosa Parks, a notable civil rights era personality. Both openly refused to give up a seat, one on a segregated public bus, the other on a stump on contested public land.
But there is a home-grown tradition of civil disobedience in the Upper Peninsula that is perhaps more fitting as a comparison than the epic struggles over basic human rights. That is the tradition of standing up for one’s rights on the land, often in hidden resistance to authority.
Residents resent being told by the state, or any other outsider, what they can or cannot do, if their actions seem reasonable in their own eyes. Poaching game during hard times is a U.P. tradition tolerated in public opinion when tied to family and personal subsistence. My Uncle Vernon (Ironwood-Hurley) helped support his family during the Depression years by catching brook trout. Nothing went to waste, but he observed no creel limits. The illegal shooting of wolves today is another sign of a backwoods ethic that short-circuits the law.
Some hunters have taken the law into their own hands, convinced that wolves are killing “their” deer, or are a danger to children, pets or domestic animals. A conspiracy of silence seals lips, and this silence in itself is a type of resistance to state authority.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a strong push for landowner’s rights, sometimes called the property rights movement. Signs appeared in the backwoods of the western U.P.: “DNR KEEP OUT.” Some people resented, and resisted, DNR/DEQ restrictions on land use and resource management.
Richard Delene (Baraga) was perhaps the most notorious case. He was prosecuted and eventually banned from Michigan for contempt of court after controversial dredging and ditching on his Baraga Plains land. Many felt he did not get a fair hearing.
Customary road access on private lands has become a big current issue, as metal gates sprout up everywhere. New second home owners, often city folk from downstate or out-of-state, bring their urban values and fears with them. It’s the fence-me-in fence-you-out mentality. Vandalism of gates, signs, and property is not uncommon.
When Kennecott/ Rio Tinto began putting up fences on public land with “No Trespassing” signs, a shock of finality hit many mine opponents. Cynthia Pryor’s arrest for stubbornly sitting on a stump was a catalyst for a deeper emotional reaction: This is wrong. Tracts of public land should not be locked away for decades for private profit.
The recent Native American encampment on Eagle Rock lies within this Yooper tradition of civil disobedience over land rights. Treaties with the U.S. government in the nineteenth century secured them the right to hunt, gather and fish in the ceded territories.
Some of them have chosen to stand by their rights on these lands, in the face of controversial efforts by the state of Michigan and an international corporation to diminish those rights.
While Kennecott/Rio Tinto seemed prepared to negotiate some limited Native access to Eagle Rock as a religious site, the company’s bottom line was to secure its own access, by armed state police if necessary, to Eagle Rock as the mine portal.
Despite the fences, the signs and the bulldozed encampment, Eagle Rock will continue to be a place of resistance, symbolic or otherwise, to this mine. From a legal perspective, the protestors may seem to be in the wrong, however peaceful their stance. But in their guts many U.P. residents will understand where Cynthia Pryor and Charlotte Loonsfoot are coming from in this unequal face-off with corporate and state power.
They are standing by their land, whether it is public land or ceded territory, come what may.
Note: Jon Saari is president of the Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition and a member of Save the Wild U.P.