Twenty-five Years of Ojibwe Treaty Rights in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota
Abstract
This article discusses the meaning and magnitude of the exercise of off-reservation treaty hunting and fishing rights by describing specific changes in the Ojibwe tribal communities that resulted from that exercise. The article examines the period between 1984, when the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission was formed, and 2009, the Commission’s twenty-fifth anniversary, when it hosted a major retrospective symposium. It documents changes in harvesting activities and tribal civil society as well as institutional developments in the areas of tribal fish hatcheries, tribal courts, natural resource departments, educational programs, health and wellness programs, state-tribal relations, and the relationship of the exercise to tribal gaming. I demonstrate that recognition of the rights reserved in the treaties by the state and federal courts, and their subsequent implementation, has put the tribal communities into new and consequential political relationships with each other as well as with state and federal agencies. What has come about is a transformation of consciousness and practice that goes beyond self-determination to the realm of realizing the sovereignty that was first envisioned and enacted by the signatories of those treaties.