Chippewa care for lakes of the North Woods
11:07 PM 10/06/03
Ron Seely Environment reporter

LAC DU FLAMBEAU - On spring nights more than 100 years ago, the glow of birch bark torches could be seen on the lakes here as the members of this Chippewa band speared fish in an ages-old tradition. <

In fact, that image of Indians holding torches aloft as they fished accounts for the name given this particular band's home by French fur traders - Lac du Flambeau or "Lake of the Torches." <

Fish, like rice and other wild food, has long been an important part of Chippewa life and culture. The fish is an important symbol and one of the seven clans in Chippewa culture is named the Fish Clan. Sometimes called the Water Clan, it is traditionally made up of the band's intellectuals. <

So important is fishing to the Chippewa that the tribes lived through years of violent spring-time protests in the early 1990s to re-establish their rights to spear walleye and other fish on off-reservation lakes. The courts upheld that right, reserved in treaties the tribes signed in the mid-1800s. Today, tribal members take to the lakes in the early spring and spear in peace. And while protesters argued that spearing would damage the fishery, research has shown little impact. <

Just as in the past, fish remains an important part of the Chippewa diet. Rare is the freezer on the reservation that doesn't contain filets from one of the reservation's lakes, perhaps even big walleye from the latest spring spearfishing season. Fred Allen still spears in the spring just as his grandfather and great-grandfather did. And, just as his ancestors did, Allen said he spears to provide food for those who need it. <

"Most of the fish usually go to my aunts and uncles," Allen said. <

Dee Mayo, a tribal council member and an environmental specialist for the band, said this sharing of the catch is not unusual and added that with more tribal members trying to return to traditional ways, the food provided by the reservation lakes and forests is even more important. <

"Eating wild rice and fish and deer, that's our traditional way," Mayo said. "That's a part of our traditional culture to have that food. Without it, with the government food like cheese and sugar, we have had to deal with things like diabetes, which we never had before." <

Partly because fish are so important, both for subsistence and for cultural reasons, the Lac du Flambeau band takes particularly good care of its lakes with strictly enforced shoreline ordinances, an extensive water quality monitoring program and close attention to problems such as invasive species. The reservation's lakes, streams and wetlands, according to Larry Wawronowicz, deputy administrator of natural resources for the tribe, are at the very center of the band's identity. Of the reservation's 86,630 acres, more than half is covered by lakes and streams or marshes. <

"We're the wettest reservation in Wisconsin, we like to say," said tribal member Carl White, manager of the band's fish hatchery. <

Talking with tribal members such as White, one senses a quiet pride in the reservation's lakes and healthy fishery. White spends his days thinking about fish. The hatchery he manages is the largest of all reservation fish hatcheries in Wisconsin and one of the busiest anywhere in the state. It stocks between 30 and 40 million walleye eggs a year in reservation lakes and more than 1 million muskie eggs. The stocking benefits everybody because the Lac du Flambeau lakes are open to anyone for fishing and are among the most popular in northern Wisconsin. <

Though the hatchery is computerized, which keeps track of water temperature and quality, White and his crews still take to the lakes in the cold of early spring to gather eggs while the walleye are spawning. It is often freezing and sleet and snow aren't uncommon. Still the eggs are collected and out there in the weather, White relies on knowledge that has been in the band for generations. <

"It's been the same for a long time," White said. "You can't use computers out there on the lake, you just have to know things. Like when the perch start coming in, that means the walleye are done spawning." <

Other reservations also value their lakes and fisheries. George Meyer, former secretary of the Department of Natural Resources under Gov. Tommy Thompson, has high praise for the Lac Court Oreilles Chippewa for their stewardship of the Chippewa Flowage. He said that at least partly because of the band's care of the flowage, the island-filled lake offers fishing very similar to what anglers might find much further north in Canada. The band's care of the lake is particularly poignant because the flowage covers burial grounds, villages and rice beds of the Lac Court Oreilles, who lost a battle in the 1920s to keep the Wisconsin-Minnesota Light and Power Co. from damming the Chippewa River. <

In far northern Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior, the Red Cliff Chippewa have long been dependent upon fish from the largest of the Great Lakes. Today, the band is one of the leaders in efforts to reintroduce coaster brook trout, an important species for sport fishing in Lake Superior that was all but gone. <

Such efforts are important for any number of reasons. But to Steve Carpenter, a limnologist with the UW-Madison who has spent years studying the North Woods and its lakes, Wisconsin's reservations may be among the most important repositories of a North that, elsewhere, is quickly disappearing beneath summer homes. In an aerial survey of 235 lakes in northern Wisconsin, the DNR found that since 1965, two out of every three previously undeveloped lakes has had some level of development. According to the agency's study, the greater the size of the lake, the greater the level of development; a 500-1,000 acre lake now has nine times the number of homes it had in the 1960s. <

So, what the tribes are doing may be much more important than many may realize, Carpenter added. <

Bands such as the Lac du Flambeau, Carpenter said, are taking innovative approaches to environmental problems that neighboring towns and counties might do well to emulate. He said the Lac du Flambeau band, for example, is looking for effective ways to deal with two of the North's most pressing environmental problems - invasive species and shoreline development. <

One example, Carpenter said, is how the Lac du Flambeau handled the problem of rainbow smelt, a non-native fish species that has invaded lakes in the upper Great Lakes region. The smelt eat small walleye and so threaten populations of that popular gamefish. In some lakes where rainbow smelt show up, the walleye population dropped dramatically within a few years, Carpenter said. <

Long before anyone else had addressed the problem, the Lac du Flambeau band figured out a way to deal with the smelt that had infested Fence Lake, one of the reservation's best fishing lakes, Carpenter said. The band re-introduced a native fish called cisco, a natural predator of the smelt. It also placed a new size limit on walleye so there would be more larger fish to feed on the smelt. The numbers of smelt plummeted and the walleye fishery prospered. <

"The tribe was among the first to figure this out," Carpenter said. <

Wawronowicz, who oversees the tribe's natural resources, also said the band was working long before anyone else to keep zebra mussels from showing up on reservation lakes. He said efforts included posting notices at boat landings and educating anglers about how to avoid spreading the mussels, which can multiply so rapidly that they take over a lake and destroy many native species of plant and marine life. So far, perhaps because of the early education efforts, the mussels haven't been a problem, Wawronowicz said. <

Controlling development of valuable shoreline has been more difficult. One problem, according to Wawronowicz is that 40 percent of the land on the reservation is owned by non-Indians. That's the result, partly, of a failed government policy called allotment, under which reservations were divided up by the government and allotted to tribal members. The theory was that by owning land, the tribal members would become more assimilated into mainstream society. The policy was a disaster because many tribal members failed to pay property taxes on their land, which was then sold - frequently to non-tribal members. That's why the reservation is a checkerboard of private and tribal land. <

To control excessive shoreline development, the band has passed shoreline ordinances that are not only tougher but also more likely to be enforced than town, county or state laws, according to tribal council member Mayo. <

The ordinance requires any building to be 75 feet from the water's edge. On waters the tribe deems exceptional - those that have particularly high water quality and little development - the setback is 200 feet. <

But the ordinance only applies to land under tribal ownership. So, despite the band's best efforts, Wawronowicz said, enormous vacation homes get built and natural shorelines destroyed. Although a few of those homes may belong to tribal members, he added, many are owned by wealthy non-Indians. They bring with them a way of looking at a home's landscape that is much different than the traditional Indian view. <

"They come from the city where you have to have a square lawn and no weeds," Wawronowicz said. "And you can't have so much as a lily pad in front of your dock." <

Still, the band tries to work with landowners to educate them about how a natural shoreline is better for both water quality and the health of the fishery. Mayo said that each year the band has a lakes festival at which information about proper shoreline management is distributed. The band even makes a video, she added, to help homeowners and builders. <

Most important, according to John Koss, the band's water quality specialist, is that people learn the difference a natural shoreline can make when it comes to water quality and fish habitat. By ripping out the natural, wooded shoreline and removing weeds and building a rock retaining wall, a homeowner destroys areas where fish can spawn and hide from predators, Koss said. <

And, Koss added, when homeowners replace the natural shoreline with a manicured lawn and then treat that lawn with chemicals and pesticides, they end up polluting the lake. <

"You've got million dollar homes," Koss said, "where they just aren't real sensitive. They flatten everything out, take out all the vegetation, put in riprap. You've really altered the shoreline habitat. And then they put in these humongous, well-manicured grounds." <

The band has science on its side. Carpenter, the UW-Madison limnologist, has done extensive studies of northern lakes that have shown those lakes with natural shorelines have much healthier populations of fish and better water quality. <

And the band has years of data from its own monitoring program, according to Mayo. Water quality testing on the reservation's lakes between 1990 and 2000 shows that those lakes with more development and more shoreline destruction have poorer water quality, she added. <

"We can show how development affects water quality," Mayo said. <

In addition to tougher shoreline ordinances, better enforcement and education, the tribe is seeking approval from the Environmental Protection Agency to set even more strict water quality standards. It's a move several tribes have taken, using their status as sovereign nations to set higher standards for air and water quality so they can better protect their resources. The Forest County Potawatomi, for example, recently won a long legal fight for tougher air quality standards. <

Such efforts, according to Carpenter, are important for everyone, not just tribal members. If bands such as the Lac du Flambeau find a way to stem the tide of development and shoreline destruction that is changing the face of the North Woods, then perhaps other communities can follow that path toward a different future. Perhaps, Carpenter said, the most important lesson to learn from Wisconsin's Native Americans is that planning for the future means planning for generations to come, not just for five or ten years from now. <

"That's a really important part of their approach to the world," Carpenter said. "They think generations into the past and generations into the future. And they plan on being there." <