As far as the Biden administration is concerned, a proposed Alaska mining road through a U.S. national park and adjacent federal land is kaput. Rejected. Case closed. Or so it was thought.
Five units of the National Park System that ring Lake Superior hope to be able to go completely carbon-free by TK under an ambitious plan supported by the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation.
Years of concern that the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness would be harmed by nearby mining were alleviated Thursday when the Biden administration withdrew 225,504 acres of the Superior National Forest from mineral and geothermal leasing for 20 years.
The National Park Service is moving to strengthen "the role of American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes, Alaska Natives entities, and the Native Hawaiian Community in federal land management," a development that Park Service Director Chuck Sams said "will help ensure tribal governments have an equal voice in the planning and management" of the park system.
Associations and partnerships developing between the National Park Service and Indigenous people bring new voices to the story of the lands the parks occupy.
A congressional hearing Tuesday into how best federal land-management agencies could tap Native American expertise for natural resource issues opened the door for Republicans to push for more oil and gas drilling and development of a national energy policy in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Travel into the past to discover the present. Explore the partnership of the Grand Portage Ojibwe and the North West Company during the North American fur trade and the NPS today. Follow pathways into a distant time. Experience the sights and smells of a bustling depot reconstructed in its exact location. Hear the beat of the drum echo over Gichigami - Lake Superior."
"Travel into the past to discover the present. Explore the partnership of the Grand Portage Ojibwe and the North West Company during the North American fur trade and the NPS today. Follow pathways into a distant time. Experience the sights and smells of a bustling depot reconstructed in its exact location. Hear the beat of the drum echo over Gichigami - Lake Superior."
Tracing the route through the forests and skirting lakes that the voyageurs followed in the 1700s provides ample reminder that the natural world provides an important part of the human landscape at Grand Portage and many other historic sites.
In September, a significant journey across Lake Superior from Isle Royale National Park to Grand Portage, Minnesota, took place. The cargo? Five culturally significant woven mats (anaakanan) from the Isle Royale National Park museum collection.