Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life (10 page)

And then Fred and Mike Tribble decided to test the limits of those rights. In the winter of 1974 the Tribble brothers, members of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation in northern Wisconsin, stepped off the reservation where it cut through the middle of Chief Lake. They cut a hole in the ice and began spearing fish. They had informed the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) of their intention to spear fish before they left, and the WNDR was there to greet them. The Tribbles were arrested, as many Ojibwe had been arrested for game and fish violations in the past and as other Indian activists in Washington state and Michigan were as well: to deliberately create a test case for their rights. Then they sued the head of the WDNR, Lester Voight. They claimed that the treaty rights secured by Chief Buffalo had never been extinguished. The right to hunt and fish by whatever means necessary wherever necessary was a property right secured by their ancestors, and they were the heirs to it. Other Ojibwe from adjacent reservations in Wisconsin joined the fight for both on-reservation and off-reservation treaty rights. In 1978 Judge Doyle of the Federal District Court ruled against the Ojibwe of
Wisconsin. Meanwhile the Ojibwe continued to fish. White protesters formed
the action committees Stop Treaty Abuse Wisconsin (STA/W) and
Protect America’s Rights and Resources (PARR), and they networked to prevent Indians from exercising their treaty rights. Dean Crist, who owned a pizza shop in Minocqua, Wisconsin, and was one of the founders of STA/W, began selling Treaty Beer and funneling the proceeds into STA/W. The newly elected governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson (later secretary of health and human services under George W. Bush), addressed STA/W and PARR in Wausau and said that he supported them, that he thought the treaties were wrong, and that he’d fight against the treaties. Doyle’s ruling was appealed in 1983 and the 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals overturned it. The appeals court ruled clearly and decisively that when the Ojibwe in Wisconsin signed the treaties with the federal government they in no way relinquished their off-reservation hunting, fishing, and gathering rights. Wisconsin appealed but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The case was settled in 1985, when the 7th District Court ruled that the Ojibwe in Wisconsin had retained the right to hunt and fish anywhere within the territory they had ceded, even on private land.

With their rights affirmed, tribes in Wisconsin began fishing in earnest. Lac du Flambeau Reservation became a hot spot, and boat landings where Ojibwe fishermen were exercising their treaty rights became battlegrounds.
On April 26, 1987, at the boat landing on Butternut Lake, thirty miles west of Lac du Flambeau, protesters opposed to the treaties began throwing rocks at Ojibwe fishermen. A few hundred protesters had gathered at the landing as the fishermen set out at dusk. By the time they got back sometime before midnight there were about 500 protesters at the landing. They heaved fist-size rocks over the heads of the state police and conservation officers who were there to protect the Indians. “We were backed up against the water,” remembered the tribal leader Tom Maulson, an advocate of the treaties. “That cop from town was saying to the protesters that it was an illegal gathering, an unlawful gathering, and those guys were telling him to get fucked and that they were going to kill us.”

“Save a Walleye . . . Spear an Indian” became the rallying cry for the many non-Indians who gathered at boat landings to protest against Indians’ fishing rights. Indians in Wisconsin were subjected to almost continuous harassment. Fishermen (and -women) were shot at. When “Save a Walleye—Spear an Indian” wore out, protesters got more creative: “Save Two Walleye—Spear a Pregnant Indian” appeared on bumper stickers. In 1987 Bruce Currie and his friend Pat Coughlin of Solon Springs, Wisconsin, set off two pipe bombs at boat landings. No one was injured, but both Currie and Coughlin were convicted and sent to prison. After his conviction Currie said, “I’m not prejudiced against Indians. . . . I don’t know them. . . . They don’t know me. . . . I’m not an Indian hater. . . . We were just goofing around with it.” One man, Wayne Valliere, remembered, “I would find the loudest one [protester] and walk right up to him and let him know that I wasn’t afraid of him. They would think, ‘This guy is crazy,’ and they would quiet down. You can’t be afraid of them. My wife was spit on. I took out my handkerchief and wiped it off her face. I wanted to gut that guy just like a deer. I usually carried my hunting knife with me and it’s razor sharp. I could gut him pretty quick.” Indians from Lac Courte Oreilles, Flambeau, Bad River, and Red Cliff kept fishing, but children weren’t allowed to go out at night.

Eventually the furor died down. Biological surveys and studies showed, conclusively, that off-reservation spearfishing had no large or lasting effect on walleye populations and so tourism wouldn’t suffer in any way. Dean Crist and STA/W along with several county sheriffs were convicted in a federal civil rights case: the prosecution claimed they had violated the civil rights of Wisconsin Ojibwe when they tried to prevent the Ojibwe from fishing.
Crist was ordered to pay $275,000 in legal fees on behalf of the people he had wronged. Many turned away in distaste from the whole issue because of the ugly racism that had marked the conflict. And, in a turnaround, many people who had protested against the treaties came together with Ojibwe activists in Wisconsin to protest against the development of the Crandon Mine near Crandon, Wisconsin, and Mole Lake Indian Reservation. The Crandon Mine is one of very few sites in the United States (and certainly the largest of them) that contain metallic sulfide. One by-product of metallic-sulfide mining is sulfuric acid. Afraid that the mining and ore-processing waste would damage the environment and walleye fisheries in northern Wisconsin, Indians and sport fishermen banded together to fight it. In 2003, funded largely by casino profits, the Sokaogon Ojibwe and Forest Potawatomi bought the mine for $16.5 million and closed it down.

From 1974, when the Tribbles first speared a fish, to the early 1990s, when most of the trouble over treaties in Wisconsin died down, many tribes around the country followed the example of the Wisconsin Ojibwe. Treaty rights (both on-reservation rights and off-reservation rights reserved explicitly in treaties) were pressed in Washington and Oregon regarding whaling and the salmon harvest. In Michigan claims were made for commercial fishing rights in the Great Lakes. Tribes in the southwest fought for access to sacred sites and fought against the commercial development of sacred mountains, such as Mount Graham in Arizona. Water rights and hunting and fishing rights were argued in and out of court. Not every tribe was as successful at securing its rights as the Wisconsin Ojibwe, but many were.

The Mille Lacs Band, closely allied to the Ojibwe Indians at Lac Courte Oreilles, Lac du Flambeau, and St. Croix (they were all signatories of the 1837 and 1854 treaties), saw what their relatives to the east had achieved and, marshaling their resources, made a similar claim for their own treaty rights in 1990. The Mille Lacs—enduring, patient, and stubborn—sued the state of Minnesota. The basis of their suit was that the state was violating their treaty rights by interfering with their hunting, fishing, and gathering rights. It took four years for the District Court of Minnesota to affirm Mille Lacs treaty rights. A wonder: Indians had won again. The state appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Around this time Sean’s mother, Bonnie, moved back to Mille Lacs. She got a job at the casino and later at the tribal museum. Sean followed her to Mille Lacs.

He had been working and living farther north. In the mid-1990s he was the cultural coordinator for the Northwest Juvenile Center: “I’d been working at the Northwest Juvenile for a while, what was it? Three years, from 1995 to 1998. So while I was working with the kids there in Bemidji I started going down to Mille Lacs. My mom was living there then. And I’d never met any of my mother’s people. I knew I had a slew of uncles and aunts that I never knew. And so, around 1995, I was following the Cass Lake football team real close, they were having a great season, doing really good. And besides—I’d quit drinking and that’s where all the sober people were. They went to watch football and basketball and shit like that. And I went down to Pine River for a regional match. I was just watching the game and the ref comes up to me and he says: ‘I know we never met. And you’re too young to be him but you look just like my best friend from high school.’ Who? ‘Ken Shingobee. From down at Mille Lacs.’ Anyway, so I went to go find him. They were never lost, you know. I was. I was the one who was lost. That began a period of discovery, of rediscovery, for myself. And I went to the drum ceremonies down there. And popped in here and there. Wherever I went down there people recognized me because I looked like old Tom Shingobee and Kenny, too. And that PR job opened up at Mille Lacs and so I moved down there for that. I got to wear a suit and go to meetings and travel around. It was fun. This was 1998. They hadn’t resolved that fishing case yet. The decision came down in 1999, but people were fishing. I’d grown up fishing—at the resort in Cass Lake where I was fostered and with Warren, setting nets. I knew a lot about fish.”

While he was at Mille Lacs Sean saw the controversy around fishing and hunting, and having learned to net walleye with his adopted family on Leech Lake he thought about getting involved. Between 1990, when Mille Lacs filed suit, and 1999, when the suit was settled, it was a tense time. The Supreme Court had refused to hear the Wisconsin treaty rights case—in its opinion the court of appeals had issued a definitive verdict. But it chose to hear the Mille Lacs case and ruled five to four in favor of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. The reasoning was much the same as in the case in Wisconsin: the Ojibwe had never relinquished their off-reservation treaty rights spelled out in the 1837 treaty; and the state of Minnesota and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe were ordered to work out limits, quotas, and seasons together. Before the ruling came down everyone was afraid that Mille Lacs boat landings would look just like those in Wisconsin—packed with Indian-hating protesters. As the case wound its way up the chain, Mille Lacs opened up its first casino in 1991 and, later, a second casino in Hinckley. Given that Mille Lacs was close to both Duluth and Minneapolis, the casinos began making money almost immediately. The money helped buffer the band from the actions of their white neighbors and bought them some measure of protection in the form of lawyers, influence, police, and conservation. Among other things, it eventually bought a bank. In 1996, when the elected tribal officials tried to get bonded by Onamia Bank (bonding is necessary by law in order to receive antipoverty funds), they were refused. Within a decade they bought the bank that had turned them away, along with one other bank and a holding company.

Casino money brought a lot of the twentieth century to Mille Lacs in a rush. It brought paved roads; modern housing; a new clinic; elder housing; a tribal school; and a museum planned, operated, and staffed in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society. It also brought a great legal team and almost unlimited resources to the battle the Mille Lacs people were fighting to recover their treaty rights. They hired teams of lawyers, many of them with experience and expertise gained from working on similar cases in Michigan and Washington state. Indians hadn’t begun the fight to restore rights in court in the 1970s or the 1990s: the Cherokees had fought for this as far back as the 1820s. But lawyers and deep pockets wouldn’t necessarily do the trick. This wasn’t the early 1970s. Public sentiment and court disposition were different. These were no longer entirely liberal times. Reagan and Bush had done their best to stack the courts. The Senate was Republican even if Clinton was not. The social climate was also different. Resort owners and anti-treaty groups (all of whom professed to be “pro-Indian” but anti-treaty because, according to them, treaties weren’t “fair” and actually hurt Indians) formed a strong opposition to Mille Lacs. The Mille Lacs Band wasn’t sure of a good outcome and was afraid that if it lost it would lose everything. So in 1993 Mille Lacs proposed a kind of settlement like those that had been negotiated at other reservations in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, tribes for whom off-reservation hunting and fishing weren’t as important as they were for Indians from Lac du Flambeau and Lac Courte Oreilles opted to lease some of their treaty rights. That is, in exchange for money, typically a percentage of sales from state hunting and fishing licenses and of gas and cigarette taxes, they agreed not to exercise those rights or not to press them in court. Mille Lacs proposed a similar settlement, but the resort owners, sport fishermen, and anti-treaty warriors (such as the Minnesota Vikings’ former head coach Bud Grant) leaned on the legislature and the proposal was killed. Its opponents were certain of victory and wanted to leave Mille Lacs with nothing. So once again Mille Lacs stood firm. Once again the band members refused to move. And once again, they won. In 1999 the Supreme Court handed down a decision in favor of the Mille Lacs treaty rights. The vote was five to four. The court affirmed that Mille Lacs had the right to hunt, fish, and gather both on and off the reservation (but within the treaty area set aside in 1837) in order to maintain a “modest standard of living.” Working with the state, the Mille Lacs Band continued policing its own members, issuing permits, and setting harvest levels.

The casinos continued to make money hand over fist. The band bought more land and hired more conservation officers. And the fishermen and anti-treaty people who fought so hard at Mille Lacs often stayed in the casino and resorts owned by the band. It was a sweet victory: the fishermen slept in Indian beds, ate Indian food, stared out of Indian windows, bought Indian gasoline, and watched as Indian fishermen practiced age-old methods of gathering fish—with nets and spears.

Sean has a different theory about racism in Minnesota (he has a lot of theories about a lot of things). “One thing I’ve got to say,” he practically shouted over the phone. “The rednecks in Minnesota are more subtle than those Wisconsin rednecks. There was never any of that overt stuff when we were fishing at Mille Lacs. Down there it was like how it was in Cass Lake when I was growing up. No one said much overt. It was kind of live and let live—maybe because the people in Minnesota are better Christians than in Wisconsin or wherever. But it was still there. You knew it when they looked at you. They looked at you and you knew what they were thinking: you were less. In their eyes you were less. I remember one time. I had been away in the service for a year. I’d done basic and went to my A school and was doing air traffic control on an aircraft carrier. I’d been at sea for six months. I saw
combat in the Mediterranean. I had a major attitude. I mean, Christ, I just
spent six months on a boat with five thousand other guys. Anyway, so I went home and me and some high school buddies from Cass Lake went into Bemidji to shoot some pool and drink and whatnot.
I go in there and I’m shooting pool, just shooting pool with my buddies.
We’re out
of beer so I walk up the bar to get another pitcher and there’s these two guys sittin
g there. I walk up to the bar and there’s these two rednecks. If you saw them you’d know what I mean: jeans,
logging boots, those Red Wing boots, thick wallets sticking out of their pockets, and honest to God both had flannel shirts on (I shit you not), and three days’ beard. So I step forward to try and reach the bar and they close in, lean into each other. I try to walk around to the left and the guy on the left leans to the left. I say OK and walk to the right and the guy on the right leans that way. By now I’m pissed. They’re big boys, big redneck boys. But I’m in a mood. I mean shit: I was solid, topped off at about two hundred twenty, hard, you know. At sea there’s nothing to do but eat, shit, sleep, work, and lift. I step right between them with my arms real narrow. I reach the bar and I pop my elbows out and knock those fuckers right off their stools, both of them. And then I order a pitcher. They’re picking themselves up and saying, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck is your problem?’ And I say, ‘What the fuck is
your
problem?’ And then they say: ‘Why don’t you guys go to one of them Indian bars?’ And I was like: That’s fucking it. I wasn’t about to take that shit, not after serving in the military and in combat (and besides I had a fair amount of alcohol in me). My buddies looked up from the pool table (I won’t name them because they are now persons of importance over in Leech Lake, but you know who they are). I threw down the pitcher and we started in. And my one buddy said, ‘Sean, holy shit! We got to get out of here!’ Eventually I had one of those guys from the bar out on the street. I had him pinned against the curb and was pounding the shit out of him right there in the street. But my buddy pulled me off and we ran down the alley and sat out the rest of the night at Keg-N-Cork, down in the basement so the cops wouldn’t see us. We didn’t get caught. But that’s how the racism was, you know? Subtle like that.”