Waasa-Inaabidaa Episode One - We Are All Related

additionally many same our children only non money too hot so Carnegie wapanocca cha-cha Winona Guardian on khaki wetting on G my mind I'm gay miigwech Indiana meager cheeky indeed nog forgive matters or Tunisia we took ocean aam Minich Kenny be Marcus a hunk this story is got gonna a we are or we are all related about our relationship to the environment we may seek way ninda janaka's Makua endowed am Winona LaDuke from the White Earth reservation recalling some of the stories I had heard was the the very long migration of our people over God knows how long a half a millennia maybe longer during that time there were teachings and there were instructions and they were failings one of the prophecies was that you'll know where to stop when you find where the food grows in water and that of course we all come to know now as well right Appaji Barton in the noon the bottom on on on the gap on ji-yong cannot go they blame aagadu no basic away in catching Mary Jo she bought the cushion and vodka chick who come on a team on gthe coming gear squads of 81 Gianni is Jacques in a k-9 gambia noon Yanni hold on the between 1 1 a 2 ball 2 : they get Islamic one award recently win it our King the become yeah in Arcana given given the Milwaukee Newswatch Anderson who kept achievement and EEMA we cannot go menacing venetian are big on is our Jonah in a cave when one usual to be cheering Emma and then the key one boo me - away but once again a corner sing KBG when gum guys in a car take the chalk river gbg1 one on week way on Emma Lake Michigan we just chaos Zawadi with you know Courage Award the moolaade for watch again Misa Amane wing Key Beach even manitoulin island Jana give achieve optimum poetical kikuchi one Lamar Lake Iran the Imam power taking cars in the context who said very nice aroma learning could be cheering do you weigh - no we claim on Iman could chew gum in on in the - so I know weekly one is our lucky God is it give it she wat u-mong 22 minutes thing you know one walking down now I want money to bond which again we suck away then go to Asik the when me - a man he is it not the school don t want wanted to make him a cold menacing cookie Baba a yahwah's me Omar is in a car take madeline island uncle the native people have a relationship with the creator and that is the relationship with the environment the creation the creator is all one we look at the four directions around those east south west north they represent the different cycles of life spring summer autumn winter then they represent also the cycles of the year the cycles of our lives that we have are you know when we're born become young men young women middle-aged to the elders we look at her birth mother she provides a food clothing the shelter and her medicines and we give her her you know thanks for providing those things when our time is finished here we will go back with with her her mother and become one with her so our relationship to the earth the environment that is around us is is a close relationship and we should be looking at that relationship all the time and remembering all the time that we are part of it and are going to be one with it again one day and that earth is a mother Lake Superior like Michigan and the Great Lakes region area and the water and the rivers that's like the lifeblood and that's her their blood veins that are flowing through her you know and that's the unique relationship that we have with with with the water the air you know and and everything that's that's in that relationship all living things and one of our relationships and our responsibilities is to take care of the earth as we would take care of our grandmother's our grandfathers from the earth we you know we get life and we need to respect that and that's the that's how we were raised one of the things - my dad used to always tell us if you take anything from the earth you have to give something back and he said by giving something back you said you can take care of it you can cherish it and love it the Anishinabe Ojibwe survived for generations in the harsh northern Great Lakes climate subsisting from season to season in a balanced relationship with our Mother Earth this changed radically in the mid 60s the French and later the British entered the region from the east seeking the animal pelts that were in high demand in Europe they brought with them metal tools fabric blankets beads and alcohol among other things which were new to our people over a period of time the Europeans drew the Ojibwe into trade relationships and established forts to conduct this commerce we became increasingly dependent on these trade goods as they altered our seasonal life cycle to trap more furs so there was a lust suddenly to to feed the market and it encouraged families of course to move inland off of Lake Superior to risk their lives and lives of their families it acculturated the Indians to a point that they couldn't survive without the trade goods at the same time came missionaries the missionaries attempted to convert the Indians to their own religious beliefs the impact is a tremendous assault on tribal religion a tremendous assault on tribal culture and a tremendous assault on the tribal economic way of life the traditional way of life this one elder from Canada was talking about his great great grandfather and during the during the fur trade he said this one man was going out on his trapline he had to go up a big hill when he got to the top of the hill he heard somebody like so he said you know not be everything I went to look to see where that noise was coming when he got to where that noise is coming from what crying noise there was a little man and right away he knew that was he says why are you crying is why are you feeling bad and he said a few people says we watch you were trying to take care of you but you don't listen to us anymore he said you used to do a ceremonies to do offerings and this is what we used to get and you don't do that anymore so we don't have nothing tobacco we don't have any more to that and we're hungry the food that you used to offer them was food that we live on and thrive on the way that is being introduced to you today his changing your your way of life that was given to you Gargi me mean who is in and it's not baby Marcus even give me many was in my life that was given to you you are leaving behind you are no longer following we're trying to watch you guide you what you don't listen no more you're too busy with that other stuff that's making you crazy after the Revolutionary War the new American government wanted to acquire land from our tribes for settlement and in 1787 the Constitution included a provision of treaty making as the supreme law of the land the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land on the very first secretaries of war a man by the name of Henry Knox said in letters to George Washington that if we do not deal with the tribes through treaty making we will shed American blood we will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and the United States will have great difficulty I am clear in my opinion that policy and economy point very strongly to the expediency of being upon good terms with the Indians and the propriety of purchasing their lands in preference to attempting to drive them by force of arms out of their country with an eye towards the coveted Northwest Territory in present-day Michigan Wisconsin and Minnesota the young American government adopted the Northwest Ordinance which clearly defined the government-to-government relationship with our tribes the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent and then their property rights and liberty they never shall be invaded or disturbed less than just and lawful Wars authorized by Congress when you look at the Northwest Ordinance and you look at the language of just consent and you look at the Constitution it spells out a what could be viewed as kind of a humanitarian approach to dealing with the tribes but in reality when you look at the individuals who carried out those policies from George Washington through Thomas Jefferson through John Quincy Adams and not to Andrew Jackson what you find is that these are realists these are people who are trying to acquire land purchase Indian title so to speak and to make that area open for expansion to white settlement to promote this disposition to exchange lands we shall push our trading houses and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay they become willing to lock them off by a session of lands his idea was to get the Indians in debt and the Indians would not be able to get out of debt and therefore he would force their hands so became a very vicious cycle for which the Indians never got out of the first people to feel the pressure by the American government to acquire their land where the Anishinabe Ojibwe living in Michigan they signed the first treaty with the young American government at Greenville in 1795 from that treaty forward every treaty that the tribes made decreased their land base and the 1870 T ceded much of what southeastern Michigan it reserved small parcels of land and the tribes right to continue hunting and fishing and gathering in the region the next large treaty that they signed was the treaty of 1819 which ceded the northeastern portion of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and preserved the right toe and fish and gathering the lands those two treaties were the ones that open the land for survey or settlement and actually Americans began coming in to their territories at this point northern Wisconsin in northern Minnesota represented the greatest stand of timber anywhere in the United States and it was just there for the taking government agents of course did what they first had to do according to the policy of the time and that was to first recognize titles of the land belonging to the individual tribes and then through a series of session treaties later and piece by piece lop off those sectors of land to create avenue for territory hood for the individual states Wisconsin first eventually Minnesota with the ultimate goal of establishing these regions as States the big one at Prairie du Chien divvied up the entire region under the pretense that they were recognizing these lands that existed between the lakes and the rivers as belonging to the individual tribes they were told simply and that they owned the land between River X River Y and River Z what does this mean they responded owning the land can we own our mother and this would be a common response that you would hear you would hear this echoed throughout the United States what does this mean how can how can I own my mother land was there as a gift the original stories tell all of the history and the heritage of humankind and its relationship with the earth to own your mother is abhorrent and they could not understand this in their first encounter with the American policy at Prairie - Shane in 1825 I think the most significant difference between non-indian and Indian Americans and before Americans English French Spanish others have thought in terms of private property owning the land possessing the land need entitled to land these were things that were extremely important to them and then you had the clash of culture clash of Understanding when Americans began coming into the territories life was inalterable change from everything that had gone up for the preceding hundred and fifty years the territorial government but the governor Lewis Cass wanted the Saginaw Chippewa and they wanted their title extinguished to everything so that there would be no hindrance to expanding statehood and American citizenship into the rich areas of the Saginaw River in 1836 the United States negotiated treaty with the people who had reservations in the 1873 the area seating those reservations and agreeing to move west of the Mississippi River the saginaw chip was in the 1819 area ceded their reservations as well and for the period of years between 1836 and 1855 the Saginaw Chippewa were landless Wisconsin becomes a territory in the middle 1830s and the United States is interested in acquiring land primarily for the purpose of cutting out trees and using the timber in the vast settlements that are occurring cob in the Great Lakes region in the negotiations in 1837 the territorial governor was very anxious to acquire the land to purchase the land and not to lease the land but to make sure the united states had the rights the contractual rights to the land they negotiated at Fort Snelling in 1837 with the understanding that the United States only wanted to take the trees only wanted to scrape off the top of the land and use the pine trees the big pine trees we wanted to lease the land and that was their understanding through the first seven days of the negotiation what allowed the treaty to be negotiated was the understanding that arose during the treaty making process that the Indians had the right to hunt fish and gather what attorneys call use of fracture rights the United States on the other hand put in the phrase at the pleasure of the President this phrase gave the United States government the option to terminate these rights at some point in the future the head men of the image everybody wanted to know what that meant during the pleasure of the President of the United States only after the head men insisted that the treaty Commissioner define what it meant during the pleasure of the president he finally said in English it means as long as you behave yourself and you live in peace with your white neighbors that's what that means then they were satisfied in 1837 the United States acquired a huge area for Pine for timber for lumber that helped in terms of development of cities in the Great Lakes region in 1842 the copper and the mineral reserves that were acquired made the Great Lakes region on the Lake Superior region one of the leading producers in the world and that went on well into the end of the 19th century there were also waterways lakes rivers streams later power sites that would be developed at on these various locations the United States acquired zillions if there's such a word of board feet of timber of lumber as a result so the 1837 1842 treatise brought a tremendous wealth and had secured a boundary line for itself the agility that was to be paid to them as an annuity over 20 years I talked about certain goods to be provided for them if you take the 1837 treaty and add 20 years and then you have a situation where during the American Civil War when that period was still over the Ojibwe still had not received all of their money members of their tribes have enlisted on the part to defend the United States of America in the Civil War even though they are not citizens of the United States even though they have money which is due to them they have unless didn't served in the military and their money has still not been paid in fact as late as the 1950s the full debt of the United States to the Ojibwe people had not been paid in full when that treaty was written I thought it was for the good of my people you have explained it and we understand it but it has not been fulfilled and we bow our heads in our client the money is absorbed in claims our school masters have clothed themselves out of our money and our white Chiefs say they will remedy it but as yet we see nothing but promises no remedy the United States government took our land using a policy called removal the plan to remove the Ojibwe from Michigan and Wisconsin to land west of the Mississippi was masterminded by Minnesota territorial governor Alexander Ramsey an Indian agent John Watrous who wanted to quicken the pace towards statehood by attracting settlers to the territory in order to get more people to settle here we have to have an economy and the only way to get an economy operating at the time was to look and see where the federal government was spending its money while the federal government was spending its money as a result of treaty payments or annuity payments sort of scheme that evolved from that was that people from Wisconsin would be removed to Minnesota and the attainments end from the federal government would be made in Minnesota territorial governor Ramsey influence politicians in Washington DC and president Zachary Taylor issued an executive order in 1850 calling for the removal of the Ojibwe to Minnesota territory he based his order on the 1837 and 1842 treaty phrase during the pleasure of the President so there are no poor relations in Michigan or Wisconsin which we know jib way people and non-indian people that is what Ojibwe people could not understand how can the United States do this Zachary Taylor simply took a clause out of the treaty of 37 which mentioned during the pleasure of the President of the United States it was his right according to what you read agent John Watrous who was the BIA agent for the Lake Superior bands conspired he conspired to him with Alexander Ramsey who was the territorial governor at st. Paul to force the Chippewas to remove by moving the annuity payments he did this late in the year the thought being that if they came during the winter to get their annuity payments they might be literally caught there the winter might prevent them from returning the government could affect their removal as a fait accompli they were already there had gotten them there they were sort of trapped and they could keep them there large numbers of people make the long trek from whether it's Michigan or Wisconsin to Sandy Lake they arrive there they find that provisions are not adequate facilities are not adequate as a result of that combination of factors infectious disease plagues their temporary settlement as they're waiting for the annuity payments to arrive and so you have this encampment of 4,000 tribal members waiting through all of November there's an estimate of about 130 people that had died at Sandy Lake waiting for the distribution and those people ended up being buried at Sandy Lake in a mass grave finally getting a distribution on December 2nd supplies and annuities after distribution occurred and on the long trip back east at another 230 to 250 people died they either died because they were they were old they were sick there was dysentery there was smallpox epidemic that occurred while at Sand Lake and then they made this long walk back through the snow back to their home territories I saw evidences of a terrible calamity everywhere all over the cleared land graves were to be seen in every direction four miles distant from Sandy Lake they were to be found in the woods too some were interred by their friends on their way home so alarming was the mortality that the Indians could not bury their dead when you look at the death toll wolf at Sandy Lake and you look at the death toll on the way home several hundred Ojibwe people lost their lives and a very miserable set of circumstances which have historically been called the Wisconsin Death March I think that was probably the point at which possibility for warfare was the greatest there was I think without a doubt a consensus by tribal people here that they were not going to leave period agent watt rose and territorial governor Ramsey had as their goal the trapping of the Ojibwe people so that they would not return they feel in that goal many Ojibwe people died both at Sandy Lake on the way back but the net result was the Michigan and Wisconsin Ojibwe people did return to their homes they had no intention of a permanent relocation to Minnesota this horrible event resulted in a an immediate outcry of objection from all sorts of people not only from tribal members but you know traders and interpreters and and missionaries we believe we expressed the conviction of the entire population of the Lake Superior country in regarding this removal as uncalled for by the best interests of the government the whites or the Indians the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Commissioner Lea reported that there was a tremendous volume of such anti removal kinds of Correspondence and as a result of this tremendous volume he issued a suspension of the removal in a last-ditch effort they decided to send another delegation in 1852 to Washington the president at that time was Fillmore chief Buffalo was asked again to be a principal spokesperson of the delegation Buffalo returns from his trip to Washington DC elated he believes that the President of the United States Marshall Moore has given him a commitment that the Ojibwe people will not have to remove and in fact the Ojibwe people look at the negotiation two years later in the point of the treaty in 1854 which establishes permanent reservations in Wisconsin Minnesota and Michigan as proof of two things number one that Millard Fillmore kept his promise and number two that the removal order is gone it's dead the negotiation in 1854 of the Treaty which called for the creation of reservations in the Great Lakes region for the Ojibwe people was viewed as a major turning point was the use of it as a formal recognition from the United States of America of the right not only for the bands of Ojibwe people to continue to hunt and fish and gather but it was also the recognition of the right for them to have a permanent presence a homeland in areas that were traditionally areas in which they lived this was a very significant event the 1854 treaty established the Kiowa nabe reservation in Michigan along with the Grand Portage and Fond du Lac reservations in Minnesota also the Red Cliff bad River Lakota ray and life to Flambeau reservations were established in Wisconsin one year later Leech Lake and Lacs reservations were created in Minnesota by 1867 five more reservations were established in Michigan and Minnesota boys fort white earth Red Lake Saginaw and Bay Mills and Wisconsin whoever the st. Croix mo Lake reservations would not be officially established until 1938 and in Michigan the Grand Traverse back few days air and Sue st. Marie reservations were not created until the 1970s and 1980s in exchange for these permanent reservations in the continued right to hunt fish and gather on ceded territory we relinquished millions of acres of land to the United States allotments was really a function of the United States government's concept to try to break down the overall concept of tribalism and the idea was was to privatize the ownership of land the individuals where culturally and historically tribal people viewed land as lack of ownership that it was a territory that you could utilize and what no one really owned it it is clear that the best movement the government can make to subserve the interest of these Indians is to allot their lands and to dispose of the surplus at an early date the presence of tribal property will tend to perpetuate the tribal influence which is retrogressive the whole lot nak was a total failure the only real advantage was that the United States acquired about half of the tribal lands because essentially they allotted to tribal members smaller amounts of land than with the tribe has a whole owned as a result creating surplus land and surplus land and was opened to public settlement it was initiated in 1880s or something called the Dawes Act and then in soda we had fine version of that called the Nelson act so when they set the process out there were so many acres per head of household so many acres per spouse so many acres for children's to living in the home and so many acres for an individual living outside the home 18 years older and individual Indians were asked to go choose their parcel and it had four years to do this process a lot of them did and a lot of them did not white folks are from Sandy Lake area and they will tile and from Iowa moved here but even over there the atrocities that they took their allotments and they charged my grandparents allotments with the state tax lien lawsuit to say tax which is totally illegal that's lost forever and that's just another thing that that the government the state government or the federal government did they did they taxed it so when you didn't pay your tax it to gladden which is illegal there's nothing you can do about it now because all the claim years are gone the net effect of the allotment policy in the late 19th century not only in Wisconsin but across the entire United States was to take 100 million acres of Indian land nearly 100 million acres of Indian land and to convert it to white ownership the impact of allotment was to devastate the reservations to take some of the choice land that existed on reservations and to turn it over to white ownership by allowing Indian tribally owned lands to become subject to private ownership it meant that White's could buy that land that White's could through through honorable and not so honorable means acquire land from Indian people and what happens is many reservations and that's true in almost every state many reservations are sort of checkerboarded there's Indian owned land and none in you know an land literally side by side and people were forced off our land at small refugee housing settlements I all them and then plagues and epidemics swept through at the 1930s half our population was off-reservation refugees the consequence of that on our canoes devastating loss of cultural continuity songs whose who do singing songs to tell those stories to other people disappear disappear being severely restricted to relatively small tracts of land made it impossible for our people to survive without hunting and gathering off the reservation at the turn of the century Michigan Indians had even tried farming when the pharmacon collapsed there was no other alternative they hunted they fished they trapped the state of Michigan began arresting Indians for hunting fishing and trapping in the 1920s and from the 1920s on through the 1950s people would would complain they would say we have a right it's in this treaty one tribe that I worked with actually had a published version of the treaties made with all of the Indian tribes and whenever somebody would be arrested they had one man appointed to carry that book to the judge and the book is worn where he ran his fingers across the hunting and fishing Clause of the 1836 treaty tourism was a growing industry from the early 1900's onward in the Great Lakes region as this effort of bringing tourists into the North Country occurred the State Department conservation began to attempt to curtail hunting and fishing and gathering not only did they court tail what the Indians were doing off the reservation but even sometimes what was going on on the reservation why this deer so my husband shot all that he went out the woods to get it and all of a sudden I looked in the back and I saw this car coming with a red light I don't know what I was thinking of but I thought state trooper was up that came to my mind then I pulled out I left my husband there they got down the road and they thought what am i doing so I turned her all and I went back and it was a game warden and he and my husband and he was trying to take his gun away from him and we only had one done you know and we use that for hunting and getting food for our family and my husband told him no you're not taking my gun and game warden said well just let me hold it my husband said no this is mine I need it and you're not taking it swept up in the momentum of the 1960's civil rights movement a new generation of Ashe Commission avec renewed our connection to the land and again openly asserting our treaty rights in the 1970s Bay Mills was a federally recognized tribe and the chairman of that tribe tested the issue of hunting and fishing in the federal courts and that was the beginning of US v Michigan in the United States have read with the tribes that yes we have a treaty with these people yes this rights reserved and in that 1976 case the United States courts resolved that the tribes retained the right to fish and like Michigan and Lake Superior as the Michigan treaty case made its way through the courts our communities in Wisconsin were asserted their reserved hunting and fishing rights as well those two young men from the coutore the triple brothers saying jeez maybe uncle was right all along and so off they went they went across the imaginary line on the McLure a reservation half was on half was off called in enr and said they're going fishing they got their D and I said you can't they said yes we can pull the tree out of their back pocket God arrested and as they say the rest is history the triple brothers case went to the Wisconsin federal district court and in 1978 Judge James Doyle ruled against the tribe the Ojibwe then turned to the US Court of Appeals which in 1983 reversed the federal court's decision and reaffirmed rights reserved in treaties to hunt fish and gather on ceded territory this ruling became known as the void decision named after Wisconsin DNR secretary Lester Boyd so this was a tremendous decision on behalf of the tribes and the tribes were very quick to to protect that and to and to demonstrate that they were going to hunt and to spear fish off reservation the next day the war began down in Wisconsin launched by the state of Wisconsin DNR which said the only thing left in northern Wisconsin will be water ski once the Chippewa done taken all the fish and deer and trees and God knows what else and from that almost decade-long battle led by the state of Wisconsin creating an atmosphere of hate and fear many sports fishing groups believing the propaganda of the state really were fearful that that what the state was telling them was going to be true well in the end effects bore out absolutely the opposite but during that many many people were very concerned many resort owners and small businesses were very concerned and in that atmosphere there was a latent racism amongst many people and much of that was anti-indian so that was allowed to really surface openly we were put on hitless fired on every night run off the roads I can remember when I was on water not lake and that particular night was a night that we thought we'd never alcohol the hate for Indian people just was like a black cloud at that particular boat landing we told all our our people to you know stay confined not to go out by themselves and don't put your tobacco down and I walked all the way on the end it is your point that would make tobacco Don it so it's just like like a wind came up and I could hear this voice you know this was my grandmother's voice and she said to me just like we're sitting here you know and and you get to know those you don't forget those and she says don't worry my boy that's that's what she used to cause my boy she says don't worry things are gonna be okay but it was fortunate that our people in every bet killed what I believe in heart the fear the flashbacks that we get them are still with us coming with the right was a responsibility to then protect those same resources and in order to protect those resources you had to develop an infrastructure because the right is not an individual right it's not a right of me as an Indian person to go out and take whatever I want the beneficiary of the right is actually the tribe and along with that right comes responsibility developing regulations for tribal members exercise of that right and the foremost principle of developing those regulations is to protect the resources the sky is falling the chicken little doom-and-gloom people all said that the resources are all gonna be decimated by the tribes and in fact the tribes have taken a very small percentage of every of every reason that they've taken the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission was formed and was comprised of eleven sovereign tribal governments in Minnesota Wisconsin and Michigan the Commission's purpose is to regulate and protect treaty rights and cooperate in the management of the natural resources and ceded territory today we had some that set for a fall lake trout assessment and put a tag in it and by the amount of recaptures we get back we could give a population estimate for the area the population has maintained a stable level of abundance if not increased in some areas Wisconsin to around the pasta lines for instance population has increased since the tree rights were implemented the reason glyph what does this area is because we have several member tribes that are fishing the areas in fact this fall assessment we are collecting a number of fish for contaminant analysis and it's part of a large grant to the administration for Native Americans many other tribal organizations work with member Ojibwe tribes such as the Chippewa Odawa treaty fishery management authority and the 1854 treaty authority for off reservation hunting fishing and gathering individual tribes also manage their own reservation and ceded territory resources these organizations and departments operate resource management programs establish and enforce hunting fishing and gathering codes for tribal members conduct research in the Great Lakes region and provide educational programs in cooperation with state and federal agencies and we received calls from US Fish and Wildlife Service u.s. Forest Service wanted to know if they could have access to our information because it was something that no one agency had in one place for example wild rice we're doing Studies on contaminants in wild rice no federal agency has done that and they all like the idea so they all want to know if they can have that information from us when we get it done and we share it back and forth the result of the presence of tribes in this area the development of their capability their professional biologists and their capability to contribute has actually turned out to be not only a treaty right for tribal governments but a treaty right for non-indians in the sense that it's being used to protect the entire environment despite 15 years of successful resource management and regulation in Michigan and Wisconsin it was necessary for the Mille Lacs band and Fond du Lac band to go to court to continue to hunt fish and gather on ceded territory though lower courts in Minnesota affirm these rights the United States Supreme Court decided to hear the case the outcome would affect all previous court rulings for the other Ojibwe as well one of the key arguments of the state of Minnesota was that these rights were revoked when Zachary Taylor ordered the removal of all Ojibwe to Sandy Lake based on the 1837 treaty clause during the pleasure of the President once again we showed our resolve and joined together in support the Mille Lacs band case and we felt that we needed to follow up because because of the things that happened you know in the past in Wisconsin the struggle that we went to is as Indian people that we felt that that need not be to take place in the Minnesota area because there's already too much hurt in Indian country and the tribes stayed unified and followed the key of the Mille Lacs band we were given direction and what we had to do we had our ceremonies we've asked a Great Spirit to guide us and we offered our tobacco in fact we had three of our band members that ran from Lac du Flambeau to Washington DC before the Supreme Court heard our case was a thousand miles and and they prayed for the justices we as tribal leaders made a major commitment to do what we had to do and I was to support the the wabun and run to the east again the justices need to take a look yet the long history of Rights between the Anishinaabe people and the United States of America and take a look at the United States Constitution that states that treaties are the supreme law of land and think if they can reach that conclusion and that that understanding that I feel confident that we will prevail in this case Quotes after an examination of the historical record we conclude the chippewa retained the rights guaranteed to them under the 1837 treaty those are the words of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor she wrote the opinion in today's Supreme Court ruling that permits members of eight Chippewa bands to harvest fish and game under their own regulations and territories they gave to the US government in 1837 what is it then which caused us to win I see to you they have the Supreme Court of United States say these are your valid people stay on the path to understand their culture to live their traditions and to know that their grandparents and their grandparents were right in honor of our grandparents in honor of the outcome of the December 2nd Supreme Court hearing and in honor of our ancestors who died at Sandy Lake because they resolved never to leave this land ceremony for healing and thanks took place today December 2nd of two thousand one hundred and fifty years later from December 2nd of 1851 will give way people from from the east started on their trek back home after trying to receive their annuities here early in October they arrived here and then they were put on a waterlogged section of land and given rotten provisions that led to their their deaths and so we are dedicating and commemorating this memorial to to remember that event and then we're also having a symbolic run a spiritual run all the McWane to go see walk run which means remember them and so this memorial and the runner are ways of remembering those events we belong to a slab and so it is about how you retain your relationship to them now the challenge and the reality is is that private property is sacred he who holds the masa Nathan he who holds the title the paper gets to decide what happens on that land there is a direct relationship between ownership of land and stewardship of land but the fact is is that the laws in the United States are man's laws and the man's laws I made largely for the interest of men you know it's not for the interests of the wolf not for the interests of Buffalo not for the interest do they do I think today that we're sort of been looked at as the canary as the miner used a canary that if any of people go then so it goes is earth because we've used our treaty rights to hold back the Holocaust of destruction to the environment on our reservations in our communities we have people who are deeply connected to the spiritual values and live those values and help one another practice our ceremonies respect the ways to the land and our relationship with our mother and there's enough of those people to carry on the value system they talk about this is the time of the people of the seventh fire the time when our people will go back and and not uh go back into the past but they say this is the time his prophecies say that this is the time when people were going pick up things that they thought were lost or discarded along the path pick up those things the arsh Commission I think that is the process in which we are engaged as which I'm privileged to be involved that process of recovery of land recovery himself recovery of who we are as mission Opik people we turn to our fires return to our dramas return to our practices and revitalize those things Oh uncle killed uncle oh my they do hey wait we do not obey obey me - sky again township way more way once I do anyway we do come on niche in our bado be nice guy a guitar to play more

Channel: WDSE WRPT - PBS

Views: 8,178

Rating: 4.8757763 out of 5

Keywords: Native American, Ojibwe

Id: 8VOeKNFb6bk

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 19 2019