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The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) is a popular destination for Americans and Canadians alike. On the border between Ontario and Minnesota, the wilderness area is a vast network of waterways almost undisturbed by man. However, that may soon change.

A Canadian firm, the Ojibway Power and Energy Group (OPEG) is proposing three hydroelectric generator stations along the path of the Namakan River. These stations would each place a run-of-river dam in the path of the river, and while the Namakan itself is not on BWCAW land, both its source and endpoint are. The run-of-river dams, while not as destructive to upstream ecosystems as reservoir dams, would disrupt the balance of life on and around the river. “[The project] has the potential to significantly impact [sic] the Lake Sturgeon of the area” (Voyageurs).

The Lake Sturgeon, once plentiful in the Great Lakes area, was decimated by overfishing and the accidental introduction of sea lampreys into the habitat. Being a long-lived species, the Lake Sturgeon does not reach sexual maturity until close to thirty years into its life; they are also slow reproducers, spawning only every half-decade to decade for the rest of their life. This delicate and slow reproductive cycle makes the Lake Sturgeon particularly vulnerable to changes in the habitat around it.

In addition, the Namakan is the only location in Ontario where the rare Pygmy Snaketail dragonfly can be found. “The species is intolerant of interference with a river’s flow, in particular to dams located upstream” (Voyageurs). Concerns over these two animals, in addition to other ecological concerns, have environmentalists eager to prevent the project from moving forward.

Flowd Dominy would like the Namakan dam project. Aside from being a staunch supporter of any and all dams, he would justify the dam with economic reasons, sympathizing with Chief Lean Jourdain’s argument. “For far too long our people have been denied our place in the economy,” he charged. “We’ve always watched as our resources disappeared in front of us without any economic gain for our people. “It’s always at the expense of our people that developments happen around us, and that has to be a thing of the past, “ he stressed. “We take the position that the richness of this land that we all share must be equally shared by our people” (Fort Francis Times).

The dam would provide jobs and an influx of money to the Ojibwe, Dominy would say. Besides, a dam is an environmentally friendly method of producing electricity. Hydroelectric generation is a non-polluting, renewable energy source, so the project would be beneficial to the people and the land of the area.

David Brower would strongly disagree. The priority here is the already-endangered animals, he would say. The Lake Sturgeon population, with its already-reduced population and slow reproductive cycle, would be very vulnerable to any environmental alterations. Losing such an important part of the lake ecosystem would also affect other species, from other fishes to plants and microorganisms—any ecosystem is an interdependent web, not just a series of isolated creatures.

Additionally, the Pigmy Snaketail Dragonfly, an incredibly rare species, is only found on this section of river in Ontario. Since the dragonflies are so vulnerable to any kind of change in the river, a critical breeding location, it would be foolish to even consider damming the Namakan.

My perspective is that building the dams would be a poor decision to make, considering the delicate ecosystems surrounding the proposed locations. As Aldo Leopold said, every member of the land community has the right to exist. We have no right to say that these two species should suffer simply because it would provide an economic boost to a small number of people.

It could be easy to argue that since a run-of-river dam creates no reservoir, it isn’t harmful to the environment. But when it comes down to it, any kind of dam is harmful, reservoir or not; changing the speed, direction, magnitude, and pressure of the water can have any number of unintended consequences to the waters both downstream and up. The makes the decision to build the dams even more dicey, because, while the dams themselves would not be on protected land, the Namakan is just a short waterway that flow both from and into BWCAW land.

In this case, the difficulty with blocking such decision is that First Nation People are protected under all kinds of laws. In the past, these have been beneficial in maintaining the culture and protecting the integrity of the people who lived on this land before us. But a problem arises now: these laws were set into place on the premise that these Leaver cultures would continue to behave like Leaver cultures. What happens when they don’t? A decision such as this one to make a prominent move into the economic playing field clearly marks the transition of the Ojibwe people from a Leaver culture to a Taker culture. It shows that at their core, they do not see themselves as belonging to the world—they see the world belonging to them. In making this decision, they reveal that they have eaten from the tree and have decided who should live and who should die.