A Crime Against Indigenous and Black Oklahomans
If you were to create a perfect villain story, you might start with the center of the story. It might cover their connections, it might cover their intentions, but it almost certainly would be a story with strong roots if the person you center has an ironbound, rockhard cadre. This is the case of Westwin Elements, a refiner of Cobalt and Nickel, intended for things like EV cars.
The country certainly needs these minerals, but like other extractive tech, they need to be more diligent and courteous toward Indigenous and marginalized people living in the area. Instead, major industries tend to cluster their most polluting technology on greenfields in the middle of minority communities. Think Flint, think Erin Brockovich.
The harms are almost always glossed over.
“Where” matters here
In order to understand the fundamental problem—the location of this plant—it’s best to look right at the maps. The first map here is the State of Oklahoma’s plat map for the industrial park in which Westwin Elements is siting its plant.
Fig. 1, Oklahoma SW Rail Industrial Park
The first thing you might notice is how orderly these plots are. With the exception of one plot, all are full squares and all are made up of squares that are one mile on each side. The reason for this is that these are old Kiowa, Comanche, Apache reservation allotments. In other words, the ceded, stolen, or lost land of the tribes that lived there that was specifically deeded to certain families.
Although Oklahoma tries to duck its heritage of removal, rejection, and theft, the very fact that its roads and towns are shaped by allotment tracts means they are shaped by the very actions of anti-Indigenous genocide.
Let’s examine an annotated Google Maps map now.
Fig. 2, Annotated map from Google Maps of the same area
Given the shaping of the plots, it’s important then to note what exactly they are next to. In the case of the Oklahoma Southwest Rail Industrial Park, the western edge abuts the plots allotted to what became the Deyo Mission Baptist Church with its homes, pastoral buildings, and cemetery. Marked by the heart is the core activity area, but south of that, outlined first in magenta to denote full area and white to denote current extent of burials, is the cemetery itself.
In other words, the current industrial park is situated in such a way that any build-out of the other two plots would be in proximity to known burial sites.
Who goes there?
The Deyo Mission Baptist Church is still an active congregation, hailing itself as maintaining Comanche tradition and the Jesus Road since 1883. Families attending the church have important ties to the Comanche Nation, with many of the largest families of the tribe represented among the congregation.
Situated on the grounds of the Church is a cemetery, which, as part of an active church, should not be assumed to be an abandoned or disused cemetery. In fact, considerations for future burials must be made, which means expansion of the land used in a future constrained territory. In other words, how can the Church have certainty that its congregation will be laid to eternal rest close to the church if they so choose?
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the City of Lawton.
As a city, Lawton is certainly within its rights to try to attract business. As a fairly poor city with a large BIPOC population, Lawton has great need to provide for its people and business brings in revenue. Except, in this case, the deal that Lawton took (or drafted, rather), gives away money via tax breaks to Westwin Elements.
In other words, the only small population that is being helped by this most directly is the small, wealthy cadre of former MAGA fundraisers and funders. Lawton is letting money walk out the door for this deal which seems like it’s really just the State of Oklahoma squeezing Lawton for tax breaks for a corporation that will benefit the goals of the state government rather than those of the city it’s situated in.
Demographically, Lawton is a town defined by the military. Transient visitors from one deployment to another have made Lawton home for decades, likewise had Indigenous people prior to that. In the interim, Black servicemembers began settling in Lawton, leading to the current population of 20,000 in this city of 100,000. Similarly, another 5,000 Lawton citizens identify as Indigenous.
33.5% of the City of Lawton’s population under the age of 18 is currently living in poverty.
It should follow that the City of Lawton should be pointing its fiscal firehose at the poor and disadvantaged before handing over the keys to a 28-year old MAGA acolyte.
Why is it here?
Historically speaking, the defilement of Black and Indigenous land by mineral and fossil fuel companies has been severe. More than a few Black cemeteries have been targeted for fossil fuel extraction, although few are documented as such. One example of this is in Corsicana, Texas in 1955 when that city was offered an oil well but drilled on part of the Black cemetery there—the city balked and decided it should ask Black citizens what they thought first.
Westwin Elements, meanwhile, has not made any meaningful outreach that is couched in truth, merely propagandistic appeals to people on brief news stories. Investments! Safety! And so on.
This is not the first time a promise has been made predicated on dangerous, unproven schemes that ultimately resulted in another Comanche citizen losing their land. The United States Department of Defense took allotment near Fort sill from Nita Birdsong, Comanche, and used it to test an “atomic gun,” one which fired exactly once and was not used in war as tested.
In other words, Westwin Elements chose a space that could be presented as ultimately expendable in the case of environmental damage. The people and history are immaterial to Westwin Elements, the City of Lawton, and the State of Oklahoma, along with co-conspirators within tribal governments.
Although they promise safety up to an F2 or F3 tornado, those are common enough to test the premise. Stronger ones are becoming more frequent in this era of changing climate. Frackquakes, too, pose a risk to Westwin Elements but they haven’t made much of a statement on their safety from those, either.
What can we do?
Refineries should NOT be sited in “disposable” places, they should not land on tribal allotments that are merely 2 or 3 generations out of tribal hands. This is the very definition of environmental racism, a pernicious effort to establish the norm of placing the most volatile processing plants within places that most citizens will ignore.
Therefore, we should not ignore this at all.
Nickel refining is on the uptick and its extraction requires fossil fuels for transit, meaning that even if headed to an electric vehicle, the nickel is already the product of a gigantic carbon footprint. This is compounded by the habits and wealth of its investors, all of whom jet around frantically to make up new markets for themselves.
It might seem that it’s fairly late in the game, but it is not. Plant completion and commissioning is in the future and you’re reading this today: you have the upper-hand, temporally-speaking, with some time to agitate and activate before they try to run the plant.
Additionally, lodging complaints with the City of Lawton is vital. We’re talking about a city that uses indian killers for its street names, there is room for shame there. The State of Oklahoma, however, would be an impossible haul, given the lack of humanity in their economic, profit-based crusade to exploit everything, everyone, and everywhere.
Conclusion
The Comanche Nation, alongside the Kiowa and Apache, have managed to make it this far without completely succumbing to the colonial drive. As a result, tribal citizens still maintain affection for the land, many seeking to return to Oklahoma to retire or be buried.
Black and other non-white people in Lawton are also especially targeted, but it’s everyone who will be harmed by this plant, its impacts not listed here due to the extreme reaction to the nickel carbonyl used inside.
You can’t let people just come in and poison your family, you know?