Taconite Dreams

Taconite Dreams
Author: Jeffrey T. Manuel
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2015-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1452945454

Winner of the Midwestern History Association's 2016 Hamlin Garland Prize The Iron Range earned its name honestly: it was once among the world’s richest iron ore mining districts. The Iron Range propelled the U.S. steel industry in the late nineteenth century, and iron mining sustained generations in the region with work and a strong economy. But long before most other parts of the country faced the realities of industrial decline, Minnesota’s Iron Range was already striving to maintain its core industry. In Taconite Dreams: The Struggle to Sustain Mining on Minnesota’s Iron Range, 1915–2000, Jeffrey T. Manuel examines how the region fought the dislocation that came with economic changes, technological advances, and global shifts in industrial production. On the Iron Range, efforts included the development of taconite mining as a technological fix for the drop in hematite mining. Manuel describes the Iron Range’s modern history and how the downturn was opposed by individuals, civic groups, and commercial interests. The first book dedicated to thoroughly exploring this era on the Iron Range, Taconite Dreams demonstrates how the area fit into a larger story of regions wrestling with deindustrialization in the twentieth century. The 1964 taconite amendment to Minnesota’s constitution, the bruising federal pollution lawsuit that closed a taconite plant, and the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board’s economic development policy are all discussed. Ultimately, the resistance against economic decline is also a battle over mining’s memory and legacy, one that continues today. Manuel’s history sheds much-needed light on this important yet widely overlooked mining region as well as the impact of the past century’s struggles on the people who call it home.

Mining the Heartland

Mining the Heartland
Author: Erik Kojola
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2023-06-06
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1479815195

A riveting portrait of the cultural struggles and political conflicts of proposed copper-nickel mines in Minnesota’s Iron Range On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and potentially pollute the drinking water for current and future generations. A year later, another proposed mining project became the subject of a public hearing in a small town near the proposed site. But this time, local politicians and union leaders praised the mine proposal as an asset that would strengthen working-class communities in Minnesota. In many rural American communities, there is profound tension around the preservation and protection of wilderness and the need to promote and profit from natural resources. In Mining the Heartland, Erik Kojola looks at both sides of these populist movements and presents a thoughtful account of how such political struggles play out. Drawing on over a hundred ethnographic interviews with people of the region, from members of labor unions to local residents to scientists, Kojola is able to bring this complex struggle over mining to life. Focusing on both pro- and anti-mining groups, he expands upon what this conflict reveals about the way whiteness and masculinity operate among urban and rural residents, and the different ways in which class, race, and gender shape how people relate to the land. Mining the Heartland shows the negotiation and conflict between two central aspects of the state's culture and economy: outdoor recreation in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and the lucrative mining of the Iron Range.

The Land of Dreams

The Land of Dreams
Author: Vidar Sundstøl
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2013-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1452940428

Winner of the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel and named by Dagbladet as one of the top twenty-five Norwegian crime novels of all time, The Land of Dreams is the chilling first installment in Vidar Sundstøl’s critically acclaimed Minnesota Trilogy, set on the rugged north shore of Lake Superior and in the region’s small towns and deep forests. The grandson of Norwegian immigrants, Lance Hansen is a U.S. Forest Service officer and has a nearly all-consuming passion for local genealogy and history. But his quiet routines are shattered one morning when he comes upon a Norwegian tourist brutally murdered near a stone cross on the shore of Lake Superior. Another Norwegian man is nearby; covered in blood and staring out across the lake, he can only utter the word kjærlighet. Love. FBI agent Bob Lecuyer is assigned to the case, as is Norwegian detective Eirik Nyland, who is immediately flown in from Oslo. As the investigation progresses, Lance begins to make shocking discoveries—including one that involves the murder of an Ojibwe man on the very same site more than one hundred years ago. As Lance digs into two murders separated by a century, he finds the clues may in fact lead toward someone much closer to home than he could have imagined. The Land of Dreams is the opening chapter in a sweeping chronicle from one of Norway’s leading crime writers—a portrait of an extraordinary landscape, an exploration of hidden traumas and paths of silence that trouble history, and a haunting study in guilt and the bonds of blood.

The Fastest Game in the World

The Fastest Game in the World
Author: Bruce Berglund
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520972856

The untold story of hockey's deep roots from different regions of the world, and its global, cultural impact. Played on frozen ponds in cold northern lands, hockey seemed an especially unlikely game to gain a global following. But from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, the sport has drawn from different cultures and crossed boundaries––between Canada and the United States, across the Atlantic, and among different regions of Europe. It has been a political flashpoint within countries and internationally. And it has given rise to far-reaching cultural changes and firmly held traditions. The Fastest Game in the World is a global history of a global sport, drawing upon research conducted around the world in a variety of languages. From Canadian prairies to Swiss mountain resorts, Soviet housing blocks to American suburbs, Bruce Berglund takes readers on an international tour, seamlessly weaving in hockey’s local, national, and international trends. Written in a lively style with wide-ranging breadth and attention to telling detail, The Fastest Game in the World will thrill both the lifelong fan and anyone who is curious about how games intertwine with politics, economics, and culture.

North Country

North Country
Author: Jon K. Lauck
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2023-05-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806192461

Travel north from the upper Midwest’s metropolises, and before long you’re “Up North”—a region that’s hard to define but unmistakable to any resident or tourist. Crops give way to forests, mines (or their remains) mark the landscape, and lakes multiply, becoming ever clearer until you reach the vastness of the Great Lakes. How to characterize this region, as distinct from the agrarian Midwest, is the question North Country seeks to answer, as a congenial group of scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals explores the distinctive landscape, culture, and history that define the northern margins of the American Midwest. From the glacial past to the present day, these essays range across the histories of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, colonial imperial rivalries and immigration, and conflicts between the economic imperatives of resource extraction and the stewardship of nature. The book also considers literary treatments of the area—and arguably makes its own contributions to that literature, as some of the authors search for the North Country through personal essays, while others highlight individuals who are identified with the area, like Sigurd Olson, John Barlow Martin, and Russell Kirk. From the fur trade to tourism, fisheries to supper clubs, Finnish settlers to Native treaty rights, the nature of the North Country emerges here in all its variety and particularity: as clearly distinct from the greater Midwest as it is part of the American heartland.

The Three Deaths of Cerro de San Pedro

The Three Deaths of Cerro de San Pedro
Author: Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2022-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469671115

This is a history of precious-metals extractivism as lived in Cerro de San Pedro, a small gold- and silver-mining district in Mexico. Chronicling Cerro de San Pedro's operations from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present, Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert transcends standard narratives of boom and bust to envision a multicentury series of mining cycles, first operated under Spanish rule, then by North American industry, and today in the post-NAFTA world of transnational capitalism. The depletion of a mine did not mark the end of its life, it turns out. Evolving technology accelerated the flow of matter and energy moving through the extractive systems of exhausted mines and revived profitability over and over again in Mexico's mining districts. Studnicki-Gizbert demonstrates how this serial reanimation of a non-renewable resource was catalyzed by capital and supported by state policy and ideology and how each new cycle imposed ever more harmful consequences on both laborers and natural ecologies. At the same time, however, miners and their communities pursued a contending vision—a moral ecology—that defended the healthy reproduction of life and land. This book's breathtakingly long view brings important perspective to environmental justice conflicts around extraction in Latin America today.

Mastering the Inland Seas

Mastering the Inland Seas
Author: Theodore J. Karamanski
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299326306

Theodore J. Karamanski's sweeping maritime history demonstrates the far-ranging impact that the tools and infrastructure developed for navigating the Great Lakes had on the national economies, politics, and environment of continental North America. Synthesizing popular as well as original historical scholarship, Karamanski weaves a colorful narrative illustrating how disparate private and government interests transformed these vast and dangerous waters into the largest inland water transportation system in the world. Karamanski explores both the navigational and sailing tools of First Nations peoples and the dismissive and foolhardy attitude of early European maritime sailors. He investigates the role played by commercial boats in the Underground Railroad, as well as how the federal development of crucial navigational resources exacerbated sectionalism in the antebellum United States. Ultimately Mastering the Inland Sea shows the undeniable environmental impact of technologies used by the modern commercial maritime industry. This expansive story illuminates the symbiotic relationship between infrastructure investment in the region's interconnected waterways and North America's lasting economic and political development.

Sustaining Lake Superior

Sustaining Lake Superior
Author: Nancy Langston
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300212984

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ONE: Ecological History of the Lake Superior Basin -- TWO: Industrializing the Forests, 1870s to 1930s -- THREE: The Postwar Pollution Boom -- FOUR: Taconite and the Fight over Reserve Mining Company -- FIVE: Mining Pollution Debates, 1950s Through the 1970s -- SIX: Mining, Toxics, and Environmental Justice for the Anishinaabe -- SEVEN: The Mysteries of Toxaphene and Toxic Fish -- EIGHT: The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements -- NINE: Climate Change, Contaminants, and the Future of Lake Superior -- NOTES -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Environmental Governance in a Populist/Authoritarian Era

Environmental Governance in a Populist/Authoritarian Era
Author: James McCarthy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 800
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000606554

This volume explores the many and deep connections between the widespread rise of authoritarian leaders and populist politics in recent years, and the domain of environmental politics and governance – how environments are known, valued, and managed; for whose benefit; and with what outcomes. The volume is explicitly international in scope and comparative in design, emphasizing both the differences and commonalties to be seen among contemporary authoritarian and populist political formations and their relations to environmental governance. Prominent themes include the historical roots of and precedents for environmental governance in authoritarian and populist contexts; the relationships between populism and authoritarianism and extractivism and resource nationalism; environmental politics as an arena for questions of security and citizenship; racialization and environmental politics; the politics of environmental science and knowledge; and progressive political alternatives. In each domain, using rich case studies, contributors analyse what differences it makes when environmental governance takes place in authoritarian and populist political contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

One Job Town

One Job Town
Author: Steven High
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 554
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1487518676

There’s a pervasive sense of betrayal in areas scarred by mine, mill and factory closures. Steven High’s One Job Town delves into the long history of deindustrialization in the paper-making town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, located on Canada’s resource periphery. Much like hundreds of other towns and cities across North America and Europe, Sturgeon Falls has lost their primary source of industry, resulting in the displacement of workers and their families. One Job Town takes us into the making of a culture of industrialism and the significance of industrial work for mill-working families. One Job Town approaches deindustrialization as a long term, economic, political, and cultural process, which did not begin and simply end with the closure of the local mill in 2002. High examines the work-life histories of fifty paper mill workers and managers, as well as city officials, to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of the formation and dissolution of a culture of industrialism. Oral history and memory are at the heart of One Job Town, challenging us to rethink the relationship between the past and the present in what was formerly known as the industrialized world.