Religious and Cultural Significance

The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community has asserted the religious and cultural significance of Eagle Rock, or Migi zii wa sin, which is the rock located directly adjacent to the proposed entrance to Eagle Mine. In multiple interviews with members and officials of the tribe, resolutions passed by the tribal council, and an assessment submitted by the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO), the KBIC has remained consistent in their claims regarding the historic and current importance of the site.

Summer Cohen, the THPO at the time, submitted the assessment of Migi zii wa sin to an official from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008.¹ In it, she argued that Eagle Rock qualified as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP) eligible for listing in the National Register under Bulletin 38.²

Additionally, Michigan’s mining laws require that companies submit an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that discusses and attempts to mitigate the project’s effects on any cultural, historical, and archaeological resources eligible for listing in the National Register and among other things, places of worship present near the site of the proposed mining. Cohen argues that Eagle Rock should certainly have been discussed in the EIA as it qualifies as a TCP and a place of worship.

Eagle Rock on Yellow Dog Plains in Fall | This is from Stude… | Flickr — Despite years of industry around Eagle Rock, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community continued to come to Eagle Rock to uphold their subsistence tradition. Mining, they claimed, is on a new order of destruction that would spiritually compromise the site. This photo was taken from Eagle Rock in 2006, 8 years before mining began. (Photo: Mining Action Group, Creative Commons SA)

Subsistence activities, such as harvesting medicinal and edible plants and hunting deer, partridge, and fish are essential to Ojibwa tradition. The right to hunt and fish were promised to the tribe in treaties with the federal government, Cohen says. Eagle Rock is important because it is “one of those places that is viewed by the Ojibwa as animate, having a spirit, not just the surface, the entire area.”³ Cohen says that although logging has occurred on and around Eagle Rock, it has never interfered with the integrity of the site. This is important because the site must have retained its integrity in order to qualify for the National Register. Such irreparable damage from mining, however, would permanently compromise the site.

“What if everyone in the Copper Country or in the U.P. had to put a fence around their church? What if we just said, ‘OK, you can go in here at this time, and you have a fence around it and you can only go through that fence on this time’?”
Carole Pointe, former Vice President of the KBIC⁴