Winona LaDuke on Power Plants on Indian Reservations "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"

"A power company now has the opportunity to pit Native against Native, thanks to a handful of former tribal chairmen. Firetail Energy Systems (represented by former Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribal Chairman William Schumacher) and the Inter-Tribal Economic Alliance (represented by J.R. Crawford, former tribal chair at Sisseton-Wahpeton) along with Multi-Tribal Energy Co. and CEFCO LLC of Texas just became players in a very controversial proposal for a coal-fired power plant near the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota reservation in South Dakota. As a result, Otter Tail Power Co., the electric utility building the plant, is having a heyday.

The proposed plant, called Big Stone II, would put a 500-megawatt power plant upwind from the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate community and use billions of gallons of SWO water annually to feed the Minnesota power grid. The SWO tribe and other indigenous interests, as well as numerous environmental groups, have contested the proposal, which has also met with hefty opposition in Minnesota - a state that has a renewable energy mandate, not a coal mandate. Schumacher, Crawford and their associates have entered this decisive fray on the future of energy production by advocating a continued reliance on coal...."

Go to link for full text of Winona's blog. You can read more by indigenous environmental rights activist Winona LaDuke at http://www.myspace.com/honorearth
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From Winona's friends at TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com for whom every day has always been, and always will be, earth day.