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A Geospatial Approach to Uncovering the Hidden Waste Footprint of Lake Superior’s Mesabi Iron Range

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Jextractive industries and societyohn Baeten, Nancy Langston, and Don Lafreniere recently published an article titled: “A Geospatial Approach to Uncovering the Hidden Waste Footprint of Lake Superior’s Mesabi Iron Range” published in The Extractive Industries and Society.

The article is available for download until January 26, 2017 at the following link:  https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UAjI,oMyQ5uEu

Article Abstract: “For decades, the Lake Superior Iron District produced a significant majority of the world’s iron used in steel production. Chief among these was the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota, a vast deposit of hematite and magnetic taconite ores stretching for over 100 miles in length. Iron ore mining in the Mesabi Range involved three major phases: direct shipping ores (1893–1970s), washable ores (1907– 1980s), and taconite (1947–current). Each phase of iron mining used different technologies to extract and process ore. Producing all of this iron yielded a vast landscape of mine waste. This paper uses a historical GIS to illuminate the spatial extent of mining across the Lake Superior Iron District, to locate where low- grade ore processing took place, and to identify how and where waste was produced. Our analysis shows that the technological shift to low-grade ore mining placed new demands on the environment, primarily around processing plants. Direct shipping ore mines produced less mine waste than low-grade ore mines, and this waste was confined to the immediate vicinity of mines themselves. Low-grade ore processing, in contrast, created more dispersed waste landscapes as tailings mobilized from the mines themselves into waterbodies and human communities.”

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Robins Publishes Book on Early Twentieth Century Cotton Trade

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RobinsJonathan E. Robins has published a new book, “Cotton and Race across the Atlantic,” part of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora series of the University of Rochester Press. The book shows how economics, politics and racial ideologies shaped the development of cotton agriculture in Africa and America in the early twentieth century.

Click here for more information on the book.

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Wellstead Co-Recipient of Sam Richardson Award for Best Paper Published

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Adam Wellstead
Adam Wellstead

Adam Wellstead (SS) and Dean Carson (Charles Darwin University) are winners of the 2015 Sam Richardson Award for the best paper published in the 2015 volume of Australian Journal of Public Administration.  The paper was titled “Government with a Cast of Dozens: Policy Capacity Risks and Policy Work in the Northern Territory.”

 

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Scarlett Helps Try to Locate Haymarket Riot Time Capsule

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ScarlettTby Jenn Donovan

It all began with the labor movement’s fight for an 8-hour work day.

In Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886, a peaceful demonstration turned deadly when a bomb was thrown. In the chaos that followed, panicked police started shooting indiscriminately, killing seven of their own officers and at least four workers.

In the wake of the Haymarket Riot, eight members of the labor movement were arrested. After a questionable trial, seven of the leaders were sentenced to hang. Two sentences were commuted by the governor, and one defendant committed suicide in jail, while four men were hanged. While the public outrage at the violence created a “red scare” in the United States that set back the cause of the eight-hour day, the martyring of innocent labor leaders galvanized union organizers around the world. May Day celebrations around the world still commemorate those executed because of Haymarket.

Now, 130 years later, 21st century technology and a group of determined historians and archaeologists are bringing the historic Haymarket Affair back into people’s awareness. And Michigan Tech industrial archaeologist Tim Scarlett is playing a small part.

In 1892, leaders began erecting a monument to the Haymarket martyrs at their graves in Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, a suburb of Chicago. Before the monument was raised the following year, they buried a time capsule under the cornerstone, containing letters written by the martyrs themselves, family photos, newspaper articles printed at the time and documents from labor unions.

As decades and generations passed, the time capsule was forgotten. Read the full story.

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Michigan Technological University sponsors US Forest Service Passport in Time Site

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MTU-Professor,-Dr.-LouAnn-Wurst-instructs-members-of-the-PIT-crewIn August 2016, the Hiawatha National Forest partnered with Michigan Technological University sponsored a Passport In Time (PIT) project at the former logging settlement of Coalwood. The site was occupied by Finnish Immigrant families who cut cordwood for the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company between 1900 and 1912.  One goal of the project was to assess the damage caused by recent looting activities.

In an image provided by PIT, Professor LouAnn Wurst instructs members of the PIT Crew.

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