Company that supplies Tesla is using $20 million in public funds to mine nickel in Michigan’s UP

MLive reported yesterday:

“The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) approved a mineral lease for Talon Metals to explore for nickel deposits under 23,000 acres in Baraga, Houghton, Iron and Marquette counties, the company announced Wednesday, Jan. 31.”

The online news agency also reported, “The approval follows Talon’s 2022 acquisition of mineral rights to explore for deposits on 400,000 private acres in the UP, and a $20 million federal defense grant last year.”

The Upper Peninsula has a long history of being mined, with serious environmental consequences that have been document in books like, Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations, by Al Gedicks.

In a previous MLive story, from last September, the reporter stated:

“In 2022, President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Defense to consider five metals — lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — as essential to national security under the Defense Production Act because of their importance to battery technology.”

So, the Biden Administration is declaring certain minerals are essential to national security, but is providing corporate welfare to companies that already make massive profits. In addition, this mining underscores one of the least talked about aspects of the shift to electric cars, which is the need to escalate the mining of certain minerals that are necessary for electric vehicle batteries.

Lastly, all of this is happening on Indigenous land that was taken from them in the 19th Century with the Treaty of Chicago, which was before Michigan even became a state. So, $20 Million in public funds was given to a private corporation, which will contaminate ecosystems in the UP, which the public will then have to pay for. And, all of this is happening on stolen land.