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Year:: 2019
Contributor:: Rock, Julia (creator); Demuth, Bathsheba (thesis advisor); Brown University. History (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Mineral industries; Minnesota; Mines and mineral resources; Indians of North America; Ojibwa Indians; Railroads; Steel; Great Lakes Region; Lake Superior
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26300/6wsy-sa92

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Abstract:: This thesis tells the stories of settler colonialism and iron mining as coinciding and contingent upon one another: iron mining in Minnesota was not possible without the removal and elimination of Ojibwe people from their land, and the project of settler colonialism in northern Minnesota was largely spurred by the recognition of valuable ore deposits and pine trees in the region. This thesis attempts to answer a series of questions left untouched by historians of mining and environmental historians. What can a focus on the Vermilion and the earliest years of mining reveal about how mining operations changed the land and how the people living upon it used and valued it? How is this story connected to the violent removals of Ojibwe people that had taken place decades previously? And how did early mining on the Vermilion lay the groundwork for the later intensification of resource extraction –– both mining and logging –– and greater use of fossil fuels on Minnesota’s Iron Ranges? The changes that took place on the Vermilion Range in the final decades of the nineteenth century show how the ongoing process of settler colonialism, growing demand for the raw materials of industrialization and fossil fuel delivery, and the funds and financial interests of wealthy capitalists shaped the land of northeastern Minnesota and the people who lived and worked upon it.
Notes:: Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2019; Concentration: History

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Rights: In Copyright
Restrictions on Use: Collection is open for research.

Citation

Rock, Julia, "A Prelude to Intensification: Settler Colonialism and the Opening of Minnesota’s First Iron Mines, 1854-1890" (2019). History Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.26300/6wsy-sa92

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History Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the History department.
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A Prelude to Intensification: Settler Colonialism and the Opening of Minnesota’s First Iron Mines, 1854-1890