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Chippewa to fish early in treaty clash

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Thursday, 22 April 2010

Chippewa to fish early in treaty clash Two bands will flout state law by fishing May 14, saying 1854 treaty granted rights to most of northern Minnesota. By DENNIS ANDERSON, Star Tribune Members of the Leech Lake and White Earth bands of Chippewa will fish off their reservations in violation of state law on May 14 -- a day before the opening of walleye and northern pike seasons -- to assert treaty rights they claim across virtually all of northern Minnesota. The bands say those rights include not only off-reservation hunting, fishing and gathering, but perhaps also co-management of much of the region's timber and mining -- the first such claims made by Minnesota Chippewa. If the Chippewa do fish before the season, they'll likely be arrested by Department of Natural Resources conservation officers. "We hope and expect they'll abide by the law," said Brian McClung, a spokesman for Gov. Tim Pawlenty. "If they don't, they'll have to abide by the consequences." Leech Lake tribal attorney Frank Bibeau said Wednesday that an 1854 treaty with the federal government grants the Leech Lake and White Earth bands off-reservation rights north of Interstate Hwy. 94. The two bands have 30,000 members. "What we are talking about doing is having a demonstration of solidarity," Bibeau said. "We will have a fishing day probably in the Bemidji area to show we do have the right and could exercise it if we want." By fishing before the season opens, the bands are "taking the path of least resistance," said Dale Greene, a Leech Lake Band treaty coordinator. "We want to be good neighbors, and this is the route we're taking now," he said. "We understand we have these rights, now let's work out how we're going to exercise them. If the state wants to arrest people, our attorneys are ready to move forward." Peter Erlinder, a William Mitchell College of Law professor who has advised the Leech Lake and White Earth bands, said the state of Minnesota should have known since the 1999 U.S. Supreme Court Mille Lacs ruling that off-reservation tribal rights to hunt, fish and gather extend to other Minnesota Chippewa. The state already has hunting, fishing and gathering agreements with Minnesota Chippewa bands, including Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, Bois Forte, Fond du Lac and Grand Portage. But the Leech Lake and White Earth claims reach farther, to other resources that might affect the bands' ability to harvest fish and game. Erlinder also said the state might owe reparations of as much as $350 million. "Smart lawyers should have known [after the Wisconsin Chippewa court decisions] in 1988 or after the Mille Lacs decision in 1999 that the state has been sandbagging what it should have been paying the Chippewa," Erlinder said. What's at stake, he said, "is joint management of all resources in northern Minnesota." Few public protests against netting by non-band members have occurred in Minnesota, but Wisconsin had near-riotous scenes when Chippewa treaty rights there were affirmed. The Minnesota Chippewa, Bibeau said, hope to negotiate a resolution to the claims without going to court because a legal battle would be time-consuming and expensive for both sides. DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten said Wednesday that neither he nor Pawlenty had been notified of the bands' intentions or claims. Treaty battles The federal government in the 1800s signed numerous treaties with the Chippewa, or Anishinabe, as they were known. A century later, in the 1980s, some of the treaties were at the heart of a Chippewa lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin. The Chippewa won that long-running battle and were awarded hunting, fishing and gathering rights across much of northern Wisconsin. The Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa followed in 1990, suing Minnesota over similar rights it said were retained in an 1837 treaty. The state countered, unsuccessfully, that subsequent treaties in 1854 and 1855, as well as other litigation and the organization of Minnesota as a state, extinguished those rights. In 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Mille Lacs. The heart of the band's argument -- and a central point the Leech Lake and White Earth bands make -- was that the 1854 treaty affirmed the bands' hunting, fishing and gathering rights in the ceded territory, and a subsequent treaty agreed to in 1855 left unsaid anything about those rights. http://www.startribune.com/local/91716694.html

 

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