Turtle Talk

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

Northern Wisconsin marks an anniversary this year, but not everyone is celebrating. It involves 19th century Indian treaties that brought walleyes, fork-like spears, rock-throwing protesters and claims of racism to the forefront.

Twenty-five years ago, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed that Chippewa Indian tribes retained off-reservation fishing and hunting rights in 1837 and 1842 treaties that ceded millions of acres of what is now the northern third of Wisconsin to the U.S. government.

It led to a revival of an ancient Chippewa practice — spearing spawning walleyes from lakes in the spring — and led to fears from hook-and-line anglers that the fisheries would be ruined by a fishing method they claimed wasn’t sporting at all.

The 23rd spearfishing season started this week, and the state Department of Natural Resources says the fears have proved unfounded.

“What we have seen over the last 20 years is that angler catch rates, the number of walleye caught per hour fishing, have been stable,” said Joseph Hennessy, the DNR’s treaty fishing coordinator. “People have been as successful as they ever have been. Walleye populations remain strong in lakes with good natural reproduction.”

The court ruling — called the Voight decision — provided more than just a renewal of Indian spearfishing and political and social turmoil over it. Hennessy said so much monitoring of the walleyes has occurred that northern Wisconsin has “the most studied fisheries in the world.”

Tom Maulson of the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa, a spearfishing pioneer, said enthusiasm for spearfishing has not waned on his reservation.

“We still have well over 200 fisherman that go out and harvest roughly 17,000 or 18,000 fish,” he said. “They used to call us the Yankees of the north when it came to fishing. … We still see the touch of racism out there periodically in different communities as our spearers go out.”

But it’s mostly peaceful now and that “feels good,” he said.

The Chippewa generally start spearfishing for walleye in mid-April when the ice melts off some 200 of the best fishing lakes in northern Wisconsin.

Spearfishing involves shining lights on the walleyes at night as boats travel along shorelines where the fish spawn. The tribe says using fork-like spears to stab fish continues an ancient Chippewa custom.

Under a formula for sharing the fishery with hook-and-line anglers and for making sure the fishery continues to reproduce itself, the tribe annually requests a total of walleyes to spear and that figure is used to set daily bag limits for anglers of two or three on those lakes.

Before spearfishing, the daily limits were five walleyes.

The resumption of spearfishing prompted demonstrations by treaty-rights opponents at boat landings in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The protests sometimes escalated into incidents of racial taunts and rock-throwing. No one was seriously hurt but tensions forced dozens of law enforcement officers to guard the lakes.

The protests died down after the Lac du Flambeau band filed lawsuits in federal courts against several protest leaders, alleging the demonstrations were racially motivated and violated the Indians’ civil rights.

A federal judge ruled the protests were racially motivated.

A protest leader, Dean Crist, a 59-year-old pizza parlor owner in Minocqua, remains convinced that spearfishing has harmed the fishery and tourism in the north.

“Fishing season means nothing up here when it opens any more. Nothing,” he said Thursday about the opening of the hook-and-line season in the first weekend of May. “The resorts, the motels, nothing. And it used to be like the Fourth of July.”

There’s still a strong undercurrent of disgust about spearfishing, said Crist, who headed the group called Stop Treaty Abuse-Wisconsin during the height of the protests. His activities cost him $100,000 in the civil rights lawsuit, he said.

“Is there resentment? Absolutely,” Crist said. “Are they resigned to it? They are not happy with it and they think it’s wrong. They are annoyed with it. All those things are still in place. Every year people call me, ‘Geez, can’t we do something?’ ”

Maulson calls Crist “the last of the martyrs” in the protest ranks. “The fishery is still healthy and alive and brings billions of dollars to northern Wisconsin,” Maulson said.

Hennessy said tribal fishermen have speared 548,302 walleyes since 1985, nearly half of them taken by the Lac du Flambeau band.

Based on DNR surveys, the agency estimates that hook-and-line anglers catch about 300,000 walleyes each year from lakes in the so-called ceded territory that are eligible to be spearfished, Hennessy said.

“Things like shoreline development and loss of spawning habitat on lakes are bigger threats to walleyes, much more so, than recreational fishing or spearfishing,” he said.

Only two lakes — Kentuck Lake, which straddles Vilas and Forest counties, and Sand Lake in Sawyer County — have had fish populations drop so low that fishing had to be halted, Hennessy said.

“Neither one of those crashes could be attributed to fishing impacts, whether recreational or spearing,” he said.

Sue Erickson, a spokeswoman for Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission in Ashland, which jointly manages the lakes in the ceded territory with the DNR and helps count every fish that is speared, said about 450 tribal members participate in spearfishing each year.

The treaty issue had other benefits to the tribes than just fish — by helping unify the tribes for the prolonged fight that occurred, she said.

“They believe that their ancestors had a lot of vision when they reserved those rights to hunt, fish and gather in the treaties,” Erickson said. “It is a very important thing for them to exercise their rights.”

A TIMELINE OF EVENTS IN THE CHIPPEWA TREATY RIGHTS CASE

1837: Chippewa Indians cede to the United States most of northern Wisconsin in return for payments of $30,000 a year for 20 years. But they also retain hunting, fishing and gathering rights on the ceded territory.

1842: The Chippewa cede the rest of northern Wisconsin and portions of Upper Michigan to the United States for $37,700 a year for 25 years, again retaining traditional rights.

1850: President Zachary Taylor orders the tribe evicted from its lands east of the Mississippi River, but the Wisconsin Legislature objects, and the order is never carried out.

1854: In another treaty, tribal members agree to accept reservations, removing the threat they will be ordered to leave Wisconsin.

1974: Fred and Mike Tribble are arrested for illegally spearing fish on Chief Lake, and their Lac Courte Oreilles band sues the state, claiming the arrests violated the terms of the treaties.

1978: U.S. District Judge James Doyle Sr. of Madison rules the Chippewa had lost their rights to hunt, fish and gather off their reservations in the 1854 treaty. The tribe appeals to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

1983: The appeals court rules the tribe’s rights still exist on public lands in the ceded territory and sends the case back to Doyle to define those rights.

1984: Chippewa exercise the right to hunt deer for the first time off their reservations, under a negotiated agreement with the DNR.

1985: Chippewa exercise spearfishing right for first time, under a similar agreement.

1987: On Feb. 18, Doyle issues a decision defining treaty rights as “the right to exploit virtually all the natural resources in the ceded territory” that tribal members need to achieve a “modest living,” subject to conservation requirements.

On Aug. 21, following Doyle’s death, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb rules that the state may regulate the tribe for public health and safety as well as conservation reasons. She also refuses to exclude commercial timber from treaty rights.

1988: Crabb rules that all the available resources of the north would not be enough to meet the modest living standard.

1989: Crabb establishes regulations and safeguards for tribal spearfishing and netting. Mole Lake and Lac du Flambeau bands reject proposed settlements with the state limiting exercise of treaty rights. Crabb declines to restrict tribal spearfishing at state’s request, comparing the request to seeking an injunction against civil rights marchers. About 200 people are arrested during spearfishing protests.

1990: Several bands harvest timber in public forests; about 77 protesters are arrested in spearfishing protests. On May 9, Crabb establishes deer-hunting regulations, allowing tribal hunting from Labor Day to Dec. 31, but prohibiting “shining,” or night hunting. She also limits tribal members to no more than half of the “harvestable natural resources” of northern Wisconsin. On Oct. 11, Crabb rules the Chippewa cannot collect damages from the state.

1991: On Feb. 21, Crabb rules that commercial logging is not among the tribe’s treaty rights. On Feb. 22, Attorney General James Doyle Jr. suggests that both sides consider living with rulings to date rather than appeal. On March 19, Crabb issues final order in case.