Audio A fight over land and history (story audio) Photos Jim Clark Don Wedll Janice Kolb View full slideshow (6 images) More from MPR An editor reflects on the tension in Mille Lacs Resources Mille Lacs County web page Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe web page Mille Lacs Messenger web page Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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A fight over land and history
by Stephanie Hemphill, Minnesota Public Radio
March 8, 2004

Jim Clark lived in the Twin Cities for 50 years, but recently returned to Lake Mille Lacs. Mille Lacs County says the reservation where he grew up doesn't really exist. (MPR Photo/Stephanie Hemphill)

People around Lake Mille Lacs are waiting for a court ruling on a painful question -- does the Mille Lacs Ojibwe reservation really exist? Mille Lacs County says it doesn't. The Ojibwe band says the reservation was promised to its children forever. The court is expected to rule any day now. It's the latest chapter in a long history of friction and distrust.

Mille Lacs, Minn. — The dispute is about who's in charge around Minnesota's favorite walleye lake. It's about history. It's about fish. And it's about money.

It's in court because people have different ways of interpreting various laws, court rulings, and treaties, going back 150 years.

That's when the Ojibwe agreed to turn over most of northern Minnesota to white settlers. They kept the right to hunt and fish on the lands they gave up. And the Mille Lacs band was assigned a small reservation to live on, at the south end of Lake Mille Lacs.

	Don Wedll

But eventually even that land was settled by white people.

Don Wedll has researched the band's history in detail.

"It was really that they wanted to try to move Mille Lacs (members) out of here," Wedll says. "And they did almost everything possible, except killing them, to do that."

Wedll says band members signed treaties guaranteeing they would be able to stay on their land forever.

But the county focuses on a law from the 1880s, decades after the treaties were signed. That law allowed individual Indian families to own pieces of land. The county argues it also dissolved the reservation. County attorney Jan Kolb says the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in 1913 that the reservation had been disbanded. "Why is it OK to rewrite history? Why is it OK to question Supreme Court rulings?" she asks. "They are as they stand."

Kolb says the county is not motivated by racism.

	Janice Kolb

"People like to spin it that way and it's not," she says. "It's a legal issue that needs to be answered, both for Indian people and non-Indians alike."

The Supreme Court ruling focused on the federal government's poor record at protecting tribal members. The Mille Lacs band says the ruling didn't address the existence of the reservation.

The fight isn't just about a line on a map. The answer could change who gets to enforce environmental regulations, who issues building permits, who collects taxes.

This isn't the first time the Mille Lacs band has been in court opposite non-Indians. Just five years ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Ojibwe are entitled to their own fishing and hunting seasons. To make sure the band can catch its quota of fish, the regulations on Lake Mille Lacs are changed every year.

That's made for resentment among some non-Indian anglers and the businesses that cater to them.

	PERM sign

Tim Chapman has a resort in Isle, at the south end of the lake.

"You just get sick of the negative," Chapman says. "If the fish don't bite, people say the Indians got them all. Well, they didn't."

But Chapman says what really bothers people is when band members use nets to catch fish in the spring.

"We can't fish when the walleyes are spawning, with just a little hook and line, but they can put out a 100-foot gill net across there when they're full of spawn. It just irks a lot of people, and we hear about it, day in and day out," Chapman says.

Chapman says a few places have gone out of business, while others are working to bring in new customers.

"And you've got to upgrade your buildings, keep them clean, and advertise," he says. "The lake isn't going to just bring your business to you."

	Tim Chapman

Things have been changing on Lake Mille Lacs. Back in 1991, the band opened a casino and hotel. Two million people come to the casino every year.

Some non-Indian businesses say the casino has hurt them. Others say it's good for business. It's hard to measure the impact, but everyone has an opinion.

The band is using profits from the casino to buy land. They're trying to put back together the land base they lost 100 years ago, and that's led to the lawsuit.

One-quarter of the property taxes in Mille Lacs County come from around the lake. The band can ask the federal government to put land in trust, and then the county can't collect taxes on it anymore.

The band says it's only buying from willing sellers, and it'll never own all the land within the boundaries of the reservation.

	Wastewater treatment plant

Jim Clark is a band member who moved back to the area after working most of his life in the Twin Cities. He comes to the casino often for lunch. Clark says he can't imagine the reservation not existing anymore.

"Even when I was overseas, in Germany and France during the war, I thought about the reservation here," Clark says. "You know, 'I want to go back someday.' I feel kind of easy here, I feel at ease. The roots of your people have something to do with it."

The lawsuit is holding up construction of a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant. It's a joint project of the city of Garrison and the Mille Lacs band, and it will serve the casino as well as homes and cabins on the west side of the lake.

Because the plant is on trust land, its operating permit comes from the federal Environmental Protection Agency rather than the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Mille Lacs County is protesting the the permit. The county says letting the federal permit stand would amount to a de facto recognition of the reservation.

The larger legal question about the existence of the reservation, went to court two years ago. A federal judge threw the case out, saying the county couldn't show it had been harmed by the reservation. But the county appealed, and a ruling on that appeal is expected any day.

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