little traverse bay bands

Manoomin Project — Planting Wild Rice in U.P.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Earthtimes.org:

(Marquette, Michigan) – Teenagers planted wild rice on Saturday in a four-year effort to restore the grain to northern Michigan with help from American Indian guides.

Delayed six weeks due to a severe drought that hampered Midwest wild rice production, at-risk teens on Saturday (November 3, 2007) planted several miles of the Dead River near Marquette beating a snowstorm that arrived Monday afternoon.

The groundbreaking Manoomin Project has teamed hundreds of at-risk teens with American Indian guides who have planted over a ton of wild rice since the summer of 2004 .

Manoomin means wild rice in Ojibwa.

Wild rice disappeared from Michigan over a century ago and is a vital part of Native American ceremonies and traditions.

“You are the first ones to bring wild rice back to the area,” the teens were told by American Indian guide Dave Anthony of Marquette. “I am pleased that you are here and what you are doing today is very important.”

“This is very, very significant, this is a gift from the creator, it’s food grown on the water,” said Anthony, who attends Northern Michigan University (NMU) and belongs to the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa (Ottawa) Indian based in Harbor Springs, MI. “Wild rice is the original North American grain and is very nutritious.”

The importance of the project was not lost on the teens who picked up a few Ojibwa words.

“Megwiich,” said Danny Carello, 13, of Ishpeming saying “thank you” to nature in Ojibwa while carefully tossing wild rice seeds into a small pond along the Dead River.

Little Traverse Bay Bands et al. v. Great Spring Waters & Engler

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

In 2002, the three Michigan Ottawa tribes sued Great Spring Waters & Governor Engler over the State’s granting of rights to take millions of gallons of water from mid-Michigan’s water table — a sweetheart deal if there ever was one. The tribes sued under the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, but there was no cause of action and the district court dismissed the action. The tribes did not appeal.

Here is the motion to dismiss: Motion to Dismiss

Here is the Tribes’ response, plus an exhibit: Response Brief + Exhibits

Here is the reply brief: Reply Brief

Here is the order dismissing the case: Opinion

The tribes chose not to bring claims based on the treaty rights they had established in United States v. Michigan. At some point, we expect tribes to bring treaty claims in the environmental protection context — see our MSU Law Review paper.
There has been a fair amount of scholarly commentary on the case, such as this student note in the Columbia Law Review and this paper in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.

The Keno Case

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

In State of Michigan v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians et al., the State is suing LRB and LTBB for violation of the gaming compacts requirement that the tribes share revenue from their gaming operations — LTBB Compact & LRB Compact. The tribes stopped payment when Governor Granholm authorized the state to begin keno at bars and restaurants. Senior District Court Judge Miles granted the State’s motion for summary judgment last April. The appeal to the Sixth Circuit is forthcoming. As those briefs go online, we will upload them here.

Judge Miles’ opinion is here: Opinion and Order

The State’s motion for summary judgment is here: Motion for Summary J

The tribes’ response brief is here: Tribes’ Brief

The State’s reply brief is here: Reply Brief

Mich. Supreme Court Justice Cavanagh Talk: Michigan Indian Judicial Association

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Justice Michael Cavanagh, the Michigan Supreme Court’s liaison with Michigan’s tribal courts, is speaking before the members of the Michigan Indian Judicial Association this morning.

Justice Cavanagh, along with Tribal Judge Michael Petoskey, spearheaded the Court’s adoption of Michigan Court Rule 2.615, extending comity to tribal court judgments.

Justice Cavanagh wrote about the origins of the rule in an article published in the University of Detroit Law Review. Download Justice Cavanagh’s Article.

Tribal courts from numerous tribes appeared at this talk today at the MSU College of Law: Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Bay Mills Indian Community, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe.

Justice Michael F. Cavanagh

Justice Cavanagh received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Detroit in 1962 and his law degree from the University of Detroit Law School in 1966. He began his career as a law clerk for the Michigan Court of Appeals. In 1967, Justice Cavanagh was hired as an assistant city attorney for the City of Lansing and thereafter was appointed as Lansing City Attorney, serving until 1969. He then became a partner in the Lansing law firm of Farhat, Burns and Story, P.C. In 1971, he was elected judge of the 54-A District Court. Justice Cavanagh was then elected to the Michigan Court of Appeals, where he served from 1975-1982. At that time, he was the youngest person ever elected to the Michigan Court of Appeals. Justice Cavanagh was elected to the state Supreme Court in 1982 and was re-elected in 1990, 1998, and 2006. He served as Chief Justice from 1991-95. Justice Cavanagh’s current term expires January 1, 2015.

The son of a factory worker and a teacher who moved to Detroit from Canada, Justice Cavanagh worked on Great Lakes freighters during the summers to help pay his tuition at the University of Detroit. During his years in law school, he was employed as an insurance claims adjuster and also worked for the Wayne County Friend of the Court as an investigator.

Justice Cavanagh has participated in numerous community and professional activities, including Chairman of the Board of the American Heart Association, Past President of the Incorporated Society of Irish/American Lawyers, Board of Directors of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, and the Commission on the Future of the University of Detroit Mercy . He is a Member of the Institute of Judicial Administration, New York University Law School. He has served as Vice President of the Conference of Chief Justices, Chair of the National Interbranch Conference of Funding the State Courts, and member of the National Center for State Courts Court Improvement Program. Other appointments include the Michigan Justice Project, Chairman of the Judicial Planning Committee, Michigan Crime Commission, Judicial Coordinating Committee, and Chair of the Sentencing Guidelines Committee. Justice Cavanagh is the Supervising Justice of the Michigan Judicial Institute. Justice Cavanagh was instrumental in the planning, design, construction and eventual completion of the Michigan Hall of Justice. He has served as Supreme Court Liaison, Michigan Indian Tribal Courts/Michigan State Courts since 1990, and has attended many national Indian Law conferences and participated in Federal Bar Association Tribal Court symposiums.

Justice Cavanagh and his wife, Patricia, are the parents of three children, and have two grandsons. The Cavanagh family resides in East Lansing .

Michigan Gaming Compact Revenue Sharing Benefits — LTBB

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Petoskey News Review:

Allied EMS emergency medical technician
Chris Heckman (left) and paramedic Erik Slifka are shown with an ambulance and heart monitor purchased with assistance from the Emmet County Local Revenue Sharing Board.

Revenue-sharing grants have helped Allied acquire seven ambulances as well as assorted equipment for the vehicles through the years. “They’ve been very instrumental in helping us keep our operation going,” said Allied chief executive officer Dave Slifka. (Ryan Bentley/News-Review)
Deciding how the community will share in Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians casino proceeds is not a game of chance.

Under its gaming compact with Michigan, the Odawa tribe is required to provide 2 percent of electronic gaming receipts from its Petoskey casino to nearby communities. The Local Revenue Sharing Board, a three-member appointed panel, is responsible for choosing specifically what projects and resources will receive support, reviewing grant applications twice yearly to decide which requests merit awards.

“We’re servants of the public,” said revenue board chairman Les Atchison. “We’re trying to do the best we can in our judgment to see that the money is put to best use. Frankly, we welcome the suggestions of those who appoint us.”

From its inception in 2000 through the end of 2006, the board awarded about $6 million in grants funded with casino proceeds. Since the tribe’s casino site is in federal trust status and not subject to property taxes, the board paid an additional $540,000 to local governments during those years to make up for tax revenue they would have received if the property was on the tax rolls.

H.R. 2837: Indian Tribal Federal Recognition Administrative Procedures Act

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here’s the full text of the bill.

And here’s the link to the testimony in the House Resources Committee on October 3, 2007.

Jim Keedy of Michigan Indian Legal Services testified. As Jim notes in his testimony, MILS has assisted numerous Michigan tribes in their federal recognition efforts, including Pokagon Band, Little Traverse, Little River, Lac Vieux Desert — and Grand Traverse Band, the first tribe recognized under the Federal Acknowledgment Process, 25 C.F.R. Part 83 (then Part 54). MILS is now representing the Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians in their attempt to become federally recognized. Their petition is complete, but as Jim Keedy testified, it will be 15-20 years before the Bureau of Acknowledgment and Research will place their file on active review.

Crooked Tree 2008 Art Exhibition

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Harbor Light newspaper: “During the run of the exhibition a DVD created by the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians entitled: The Four Directions and the Waganakising Odawa will be playing the gallery. The video has been selected as the Official Selection Bell South Native American Film Festival 2006. Different items from local Odawa collections will be on display in the gallery to bring the traditions of the culture to life; baskets, house wares, plants, hides, carvings will all be part of the Four Directions experience.”

Profiling Frank Ettawageshik — Indigenous Law Conference Keynote Speaker

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

The Petoskey News Review has published a nice profile of Frank Ettawageshik, the chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. An excerpt:

 Ettawageshik is known for his efforts locally and nationally. He has testified nationally before a house committee in Washington, D.C., on aquatic invasive species. In 2006, he testified in front of a senate committee, requesting funding for the implementation of the strategic plan for the restoration and conservation of the Great Lakes.

Ettawageshik also led 140 tribes and Canadian First Nations to sign the historic Tribal and First National Great Lakes Water Accord, urging Canadian provincial and Great Lakes state governments with boundaries on the Great Lakes to prevent diversion of the waters.

Ettawageshik said he was humbled by the honor but more work needs to be done.

“People look around and see so much water and they don’t understand how fragile our Great Lakes ecosystem is,” Ettawageshik said. “ I have tried to sum up what were doing. The answers that came to me is if it’s harmful don’t do it and if we’re already doing it stop and if we’ve already made a problem clean it up.”

Frank will be our keynote speaker at this year’s conference, “American Indian Law & Literature.”

Gatherer’s Rights under the Inland Settlement

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/NEWS06/710070683

New rules on gathering seen as an attack on Indians’ way of life

October 7, 2007

BY TINA LAM

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

ST. IGNACE — Standing in a field with the Mackinac Bridge as a backdrop, Tony Grondin scatters loose tobacco on the ground.

He mutters a prayer in Anishinabewoon under his breath, thanking the life he is about to take for its gift. With a knife, he makes a deft, bloodless cut and then gently holds up his prey: branches of a nannyberry bush.

Grondin, 58, is a gatherer for his tribe, the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa. From boiled bear fat (used as a salve) that he renders himself to porcupine pelts picked clean by beetles, he provides medicine and ceremonial items for the tribe’s healers. But he said his gathering is at risk, after five tribes and the state signed an agreement that restricts it.

“It’s wrong,” he said.

And he may flaunt the new rules.

Grondin said he treats all forms of life with dignity. Much of his knowledge of the woods and waters of the eastern Upper Peninsula was absorbed from elders and relatives who taught him. He will take the branches to his garage for drying, along with hundreds of other things he’s preparing.

Grondin isn’t just a gatherer; he’s a prodigious hunter, tracker, fisherman, trapper and taxidermist who tans his own hides. He makes unprocessed tobacco for ceremonies. He builds drums from tanned deer hides stained with dye he makes from walnuts.

When he harvests birch bark, he is careful not to kill the tree. When he harvests a plant or kills an animal, he uses every scrap.

Under the new agreement, Grondin — for the first time in his life — needs a permit to gather. The deal restricts him to certain state lands and limits what and how much he can gather. He must make reports on what he has picked or cut.

The rationale is to conserve nature’s resources, but he doesn’t buy it.

“We have been preserving them forever,” he said. “It baffles my mind to get permits.” Having someone dictate where elements of a medicine are gathered could render it useless. “A healer could reject it,” he said.

Living in 2 worlds

Grondin is a tall, silver-haired man. He thinks before he speaks.

Born and raised in St. Ignace, the city on the Upper Peninsula side of the Mackinac Bridge, Grondin has traced relatives back to the 1600s. His grandfather owned Rabbit’s Back, a lumpy chunk of land on Lake Superior where the tribe’s newest casino sits. His father taught him the Anishinabewoon language and how to gather.

He inhabits parallel worlds. He was raised Catholic, flies an American flag and won a Purple Heart as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam. He worked for the state highway department until retirement. The kitchen of the family home, which is not on a reservation, is decorated in an apple motif.

But in his study, the Indian half of his life unfolds. A gnarling bear on the wall is surrounded by seven majestic deer heads and a stuffed hawk, bobcat, fox, raccoon and weasel. Beautifully tanned pelts of coyote, badgers, beavers, skunks and deer hang in a corner. From a closet he pulls the elaborate outfit he wears at powwows, which he fashioned partly from the head, claws and feathers of a bald eagle killed by a car.

Gathering is more than roots and berries for Grondin. He gets excited when he comes across fresh roadkill — a possum, raccoon or a rabbit — that’ll soon be in his freezer. He saves the animals’ toenails for rattles.

Grondin’s garage, too, is a place of wonder: a cave of powerful sweet smells and odd bits of hairy flesh scattered among things like his Sears riding mower and red tool chest.

Every corner holds a surprise. There is a jar of rendered bear fat he boiled himself, moose hooves from Canada, bear claws with hair still stuck to them in a baggie and beetles feasting on the underside of a porcupine pelt on the floor. Dried sage and sweetgrass hang in bunches from the ceiling.

He gathers cedar bark to sheath the roof of a tepee at the local American Indian museum. Cutting cedar bark will kill the tree. He typically takes about 10 cedars a year, he said, using leaves for tobacco, milling the wood for drums and turning the tiniest branches into buttons for ceremonial shirts.

“My dad taught me all this,” he said. “Our culture teaches us to take what we need, and leave the rest for others.”

Reasons for a change

The Sault tribe’s 23,000 adult members are voting until Oct. 17 on whether to approve the hunting-fishing-gathering agreement with the state; ballots went out the last week in September. Until the voting ends, said tribal spokesman Cory Wilson, the tribe has no comment.

The state sought the rules on gathering so tribes could have access to what they need, but would work with local forest managers on where and when to get it, said Mary Dettloff, spokeswoman for the Department of Natural Resources.

“We’re permitting them to do it, but asking their cooperation,” she said. “You can’t just go into the forest and cut down the trees.”

Frank Ettawageshik, chairman of the Little Traverse Bay tribe near Petoskey, said the agreement gives the tribes certainty that their hunting, fishing and gathering rights under a 1836 treaty with the U.S. government will be honored. He said the gathering rules would help protect resources for coming generations.

Grondin disagrees.

“I hope our tribe rejects it,” Grondin said. “Whatever the tribe requires, I’ll do. But I will still gather where I want.”

This is a very interesting story, but if the only problem is that tribal gatherers and hunters need a permit, I’m not sure it’s compelling. I don’t see the Inland settlement doing anything but guaranteeing the right to gather, subject to tribal regulations. If Soo Tribe members want to reject the settlement, that is their prerogative, but the alternative likely is costly and (possibly disastrous) litigation.

However, though it isn’t as spectacular a story as the Makah whaling controversy, the possibility that some Michigan Indians will reject the Inland settlement is similar to that case, where tribal people harvested a whale in violation of tribal and federal law. The notion of tribal people rejecting treaty rights and their various interpretations by courts, tribes, and non-Indian governments in favor of “pre-treaty” rights is an interesting legal, historical, and political question.

Student Trip to Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians

Kate Fort

studentgroupltbb2.JPG

Students in the Federal Law and Indian Tribes class at MSU Law traveled to the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians for a day of meetings titled “Sovereignty in Practice.” Students were kindly hosted by the Tribe at the government buildings, where they met with tribal judges, the tribal council, the chief of police, the director of the Natural Resources department, tribal attorneys and members of the Office of Cultural Preservation.

The class Federal Law and Indian Tribes primarily provides a base in federal Indian law through Supreme Court cases. This unique trip gave students a different perspective of tribes and how the Supreme Court cases they study affect day-to-day tribal operations.