University Place

Treaties and Tourism in Northern Wisconsin

[gentle music]

Andrew Carlson:All right, welcome, everyone. We’re so excited to have you here watching this episode ofUniversity Place. It’s my pleasure to introduce Dr. Katrina Phillips for us this evening as she talks about treaties and tourism in northern Wisconsin.

So Dr. Katrina Phillips is a proud citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, and she’s an associate professor of history at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, as well as a public historian and an award-winning author. And with a focus on Native history, her work has been published and quoted in all sorts of publications, fromThe Washington Postto NPR, and she’s even written an armful of children’s books. And her current book project,The Land Is the Only Thing, focuses on about a century’s worth of Red Cliff Ojibwe history and activism, environmentalism, and the tourism that shaped northern Wisconsin. So let’s give a big, warm Wisconsin welcome to Dr. Katrina Phillips.

[audience applauding]

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Boozhoo niijiiwag. Hello, my friends. Niminwendam eyaawan omaa noongom. I am glad to be here today. Katrina Phillips nindizhinakaaz. My name is Katrina Phillips. Makwa nindoodem minawaa Miskwaabikang nimbiindige-bii’igaaz. I am from the Bear Clan, and I am enrolled at Red Cliff.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:As Andrew so graciously noted, I am an associate professor in the history department at Macalester College, and I’d like to thank you all for joining us for this event tonight. And I also want to take a moment to thank everyone who’s come together to make both this live event and the live stream happen. I grew up outside Superior and spent hours scouring the shelves of the Superior Public Library with my mom as a kid, and it feels like a very full-circle moment to be able to simultaneously give this talk in Madison and in Superior, and I’m just very grateful for this opportunity.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so, I want to begin by situating myself, literally, in this work. And so as I mentioned, I grew up in rural northern Wisconsin, about half an hour southeast of Superior. Not too far from Pattison Park, if that rings a bell for folks. There we go, I knew I’d find something.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so I am the daughter of an avid outdoorsman, and those hours in the library with my mom were offset by the hours spent in duck blinds and deer stands, or standing knee-deep in rivers, trying to mimic my dad’s effortless cast. And so my dad’s affinity for the outdoors, though, is matched only by his deeply rooted belief in conservation. He’s a catch-and-release fisherman. It doesn’t matter how big the fish is, it is going back in the river. And he’s also a longtime supporter of organizations that aim to help maintain and protect wildlife and waterfowl and their habitats.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so, as it turned out, I inherited more of his love of history and writing than his love of hunting and fishing. But I ended up marrying a pheasant hunter who’s now dabbling in turkey hunting. He actually bought our nine-year-old a turkey call, and the nine-year-old loves to practice it in the living room, so I guess the joke’s on me.

[audience laughing]

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. And as a kid, it never felt contradictory to go from fishing in the Brule River to a Ducks Unlimited banquet. And now, as an adult, it doesn’t feel out of the ordinary for my husband, pictured here, to slam on the brakes if he sees a rooster in a hay field on the same day he gets another magazine from Pheasants Forever in the mail. He’s actually wearing a Pheasants Forever hat in this picture. I promise this isn’t, like, sponsored by Pheasants Forever, but it was just too good of an image to pass up.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so I see these two pieces as part of a larger puzzle. Neither can exist without the other. And they serve as complements to one another. If there are no pheasants to hunt or fish to catch, people’s livelihoods and hobbies disappear. And so this presentation then offers a glimpse into my current research, which turns to activism, environmentalism, and tourism on and around the Red Cliff Reservation in northern Wisconsin.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:As I’m sure many of you know, the region’s rich forests and plentiful lakes have been a marker of pride for decades. They have served as the foundation of Native livelihoods, as the backbone of multiple economies and industries, and as a key piece of the state’s conservation movement. In this talk, I’ll be tracing the parallel growth of tourism and treaty rights advocacy in the 20th and 21st centuries, highlighting the questions, contestations, and outcomes of these movements.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So the reservation of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, which is my reservation, sits in the northernmost part of Wisconsin along the south shore of Gichigami, or what we as Ojibwe people call Lake Superior. Our reservation is one of several that were established in the state through the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe. Like Native nations across what’s now the United States, Ojibwe people have advocated for their lands, their livelihoods, and their sovereignty for centuries.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:For my purposes here today, I’m going to start in the early decades of the 19th century. I am a historian; you were all warned about this, okay, so don’t say you didn’t see this coming.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So in the summer of 1837, more than a thousand Ojibwe people traveled to Fort Snelling, a military outpost built at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. They came from across the lands that would become Minnesota and Wisconsin because government officials, including Wisconsin Territorial Governor Henry Dodge, wanted Ojibwe lands, especially the vast pine forests on 13 million acres in what’s now east-central Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. He told the Ojibwe who had gathered at the fort that these lands were not worth much for agriculture or for settlement or for hunting. The forests, he claimed, were the focus of the negotiations.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:During the treaty negotiations, though, Ojibwe leaders insisted that the treaty include an explicit retention of their rights to hunt, fish, and gather on the ceded lands. As a leader named Eshkibagikoonzhe, also known to French fur traders as Flat Mouth, told Dodge, “You know that without the land and the rivers and lakes, we could not live.”

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Eshkibagikoonzhe reminded the treaty negotiators that the Ojibwe wanted to preserve their right of, quote, “Making sugar from the trees and getting a living from the lakes and rivers.” End quote. Article five of the Treaty of Saint Peter’s, also known as the Pine Tree Treaty, guaranteed that the Ojibwe had the privilege of, quote, “hunting, fishing, and gathering the wild rice upon the lands, the rivers, and the lakes included in the territory ceded.”

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Five years later, Ojibwe leaders ceded an additional 10 million acres, including what would eventually become the Red Cliff Reservation. This time, though, treaty negotiators did not want timber. The discovery of minerals in northern Michigan drove this round of treaty negotiations. And so Ojibwe representatives traveled to La Pointe on Madeline Island in the summer and fall of 1842. Here, as in the previous negotiations, the Ojibwe negotiators were adamant that they would reserve their use of fructuary rights. Colloquially known as the Copper Treaty, article two of the Treaty of La Pointe echoed the Treaty of St. Peter’s in recognizing that Ojibwe people reserved, quote, “the right of hunting on the ceded territory.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:A subsequent Treaty of La Pointe, signed in 1854, in the wake of what we as Ojibwe people call the Sandy Lake Tragedy, created a number of reservations across the upper Great Lakes, and as they had done for decades, the Ojibwe insisted on retaining the right to hunt, fish, and gather on the ceded lands.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The foresight of our ancestors kept Ojibwe people alive throughout the rest of the century. Ojibwe people hunted, fished, and gathered to provide for their communities, and they continually recognized and understood the importance of these three treaties. The treaties, meanwhile, cleared the path for speculators and the development of resource extraction industries. Settlers followed speculators, and Wisconsin became a state in 1848.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:As fellow Red Cliff Ojibwe historian Michael Witgen argues, the lands that had seemed, quote, “unfavorable for U.S. settlements,” end quote, had transformed into hospitable places for resource extraction. And so this photo here, this is the Bayfield Wharf in 1936.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so the lands and the lakes of northern Wisconsin were an early target for these resource extraction industries. Even the lake itself was not immune from the siren song of extraction, and Chantal Norrgard’s work reminds us that the Great Lakes fishing industry was one of the earliest endeavors. The American Fur Company started the first commercial fishing venture in the 1830s, and, again, this is before the treaty cessions of 1837 and 1842, and it would be one of the region’s most dominant industries for more than a century.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The 1855 opening of the canal at Sault Ste. Marie allowed for the export of whitefish, and the expansion of fishing operations in the 1870s and 1880s led theBayfield County Pressto proclaim that, quote, “The fishing industry has given a name and fame to Bayfield all over the United States.” End quote. I can neither confirm nor deny that that was actually the case, but it’s a good quote, right?

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The overfishing of whitefish in the 1890s forced fishermen to switch to lake trout and herring, but the whitefish population rebounded by the early 20th century.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Commercial fishing may have been the first resource extraction industry in the region, but it operated alongside logging, quarrying, and tourism. And so the cession of those vast timber holdings opened the floodgates of the logging industry, and the first logging boom ran from 1850 to 1856.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:According to Jerry Apps, lumber was the driving factor in the development of central and northern Wisconsin. Towns around Red Cliff, including Bayfield, Ashland, and Washburn, all followed suit. The American Fur Company built the first sawmill in the Chequamegon region, just south of Bayfield in 1845. So this is just three years after the Treaty of La Pointe that was signed in 1842. Other sawmills sprang up throughout the region, and, according to Jane C. Bush, seven sawmills spread across Ashland, Washburn, and Bayfield logged more than 67 million board feet of lumber in 1885 alone. And in 1892, sawmills in Bayfield and Ashland counties cut more than 285 million board feet.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So we have the development of these industries throughout the 19th century. And again, as promised in the title, there’s another one I want to turn to as well. Tourism.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So tourism was a flourishing industry in the eastern United States by the 1820s, emerging at a pivotal moment in U.S. society when Americans were working to define their national identity in opposition to Europe. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, the tourist industry initially sought to capitalize on America’s fascination with the nation’s landscape and its original inhabitants.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Kilbourn City in south-central Wisconsin eventually renamed itself Wisconsin Dells to capitalize on the popularity of the Dells on the Wisconsin River. The Dells were known as the region’s greatest natural wonder as early as the mid-1840s and quickly became one of the state’s first tourist destinations.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:By 1849, when Wisconsin naturalists toured the region, the area already boasted an exciting history to draw tourists in, a hotel, and residents eager to entertain visitors. While, you know, these somewhat dry, geologically-centered descriptions of the many fantastic shapes in the cliffs may not have been thrilling entries in a tourist’s guidebook, the early fascination with the area soon turned into a booming business.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:These early tourist manuals and promotional materials emphasized the area’s natural landscape and natural beauty. Lakes and rivers held bountiful fish to catch, and the woods hid game animals for hunting. Those not inclined toward hunting and fishing could tour breathtaking sites whose innate splendor had clearly been preserved. Tourists started inching into what’s now the Midwest and the Great Lakes region by the middle of the 19th century. By the late 1860s, lakes in southern Wisconsin were fashionable vacation spots, attracting tourists from Milwaukee, Chicago, Memphis, and even New Orleans.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:By the 1870s, railroad companies and local entrepreneurs led concerted efforts to attract tourists to Wisconsin. An 1875 “Tourist’s Guide to the Wisconsin Dells” embraced what they called the “prose, romance, and poetry of this wonderful region,” teasing the general public with stories of the natural wonders and beauties of the scenery surrounding it, and more especially, the notable Dells of the Wisconsin River and the strange, wild glens and canyons which enter the Dells from either side.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Encouraged by the early success at the Dells, business owners and entrepreneurs quickly began building cabins, cottages, and resorts, and contracting with railroad and steamship companies. Soon after, wealthy urban tourists began traveling to Wisconsin to avail themselves of the numerous opportunities for outdoor recreation and relaxation.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Newspaper writers swooned over the clean air, breathtaking sunsets, and wondrous meetings of soaring red bluffs and deep blue water that held even more allure for visitors. Another 1875 “Guide to Summer Resorts in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan,” which was published as a supplement to a railroad routes and rates book, listed more than a dozen Wisconsin destinations. The guide, for instance, extolled sailing, rowing, and fishing near Milwaukee, which also had the full benefit of the cool and refreshing lake breeze. The water cure at the Bidwell House promised to offer speedy and permanent relief for diseases that had, quote, “baffled the skill of man and have been pronounced incurable.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But tourists came to Wisconsin for more than just the promised health benefits. In 1880, Chicago attorney John Lyle King boasted that the northern wildernesses offered a grateful reprieve and a speedy reparation from what he called, oh, God, the, quote, “exhaustion that comes of the inordinate and exacting frets and activities of business, the languor and inertia of summer fervors, the ennui and satiety that followed the dissipations of social life.” End quote. We get it, right?

[audience laughing]

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But Chicago lawyers and capitalists like King and his companions had come to Wisconsin for outdoor adventures that freed them from the restraints and stress of the city and civilization, proferring instead the imagined freedom and simplicity of a rural paradise.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:In many instances, the Native people who still lived throughout Wisconsin became part of the tourist experience. King’s sojourn was only possible because of two Menominee guides. And so in his narrative, King calls them natural foresters. He calls them skilled canoeists. He calls them men with acute senses, whom he deems, quote, “the navigator of the birchbark, the carrier of the luggage, the tent builder, the log heap fireman, the cook, the baker, the scullion, in fact, the indispensable general utility man and brother.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Aren’t you glad I read this and you didn’t have to read that?

[audience laughing]

Dr. Katrina Phillips:At other times, Native people were the draw for tourists. An 1897 bicycling guide encouraged cyclists to visit what they called the Chippewa Indian Reservation in Odanah in the northern part of the state, calling it, quote, “an enjoyable trip for wheelmen who desire to see the red man at home.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial pictured here, which capitalized both on the touristic desire to see both Native performers and the increasing popularity of the Wisconsin Dells. So railroads, hotels, and resorts started making arrangements for and promoting performances that featured Native participants in order to offer their guests the wilderness experiences that urban tourists craved.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:In one of the most… I should probably call it infamous example, Indian agent William Mercer and William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody yes, the man, the myth, the legend himself brought Bad River Ojibwe leaders together with Cody’s Lakota performers for a publicity stunt in 1896. Mercer and Cody believed that a dramatic signing of a peace treaty on the grounds of Ashland’s grand Hotel Chequamegon would thrill and delight non-Natives in the surrounding region. Nearly 900 Bad River and Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe came to Ashland for this event.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And according to Eric Olmanson, the sheer number of Ojibwe people at the hotel also became something of a tourist attraction, because then hundreds of Ashland residents went down to Front Street to see what was called, quote, “the dusky men and women whose presence had converted the Chequamegon into a veritable Indian reserve.” End quote. Not to mention the fact that Red Cliff and Bad River are still pretty close here, right? But again, this is what we’re dealing with here.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So for most of the 19th century, though, tourism in Wisconsin was a parallel industry, operating alongside, again, fishing, logging, and quarrying, among other industries, especially in the northern part of the state. As the 19th century barreled toward the 20th and extractive resource industries declined, the state needed to find a new direction toward economic prosperity. An infrastructure for tourism already existed throughout most of the state thanks to the proliferation of railroad lines that crisscrossed the state, and the growing automobile industry. Abandoning these pathways was not an option after all of the time and money spent building railway lines, locks and docks for steamships, and roads.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So rather than exporting resources out of the state, tourism aimed to import people, primarily people from larger cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Saint Paul, and even from cities as far south as St. Louis who hoped to escape, quote, “the noise, congestion, and pace of urban life.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:In an effort to appeal to more potential visitors, the state promoted palliative cures for city living, such as the Wisconsin Dells, and the restorative resorts that capitalized on painting their land, water, and air as pristine, while outdoor recreation endeavors offered tourists the chance to fish, swim, dive, surf, trap shoot, play golf, play tennis, and take motorboat trips and automobile excursions.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So I’m gonna take a moment here, because every time I use this picture, I like to point out the lady dressed in all black because she really seems like she’s enjoying herself.

[audience laughing]

Dr. Katrina Phillips:This is an image of a picnic on Basswood Island, up in the Apostle Islands, from 1916. But tourism started to take a stronger foothold in the region, again, as these extractive resource industries start to decline. And so the tourism industry starts marketing the state’s lakes, rivers, and forests to a traveling American public that had both become disillusioned with the urban environment and had the time and the money to travel.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So as large cities become more and more crowded, the country life comes to be more appealing to urban dwellers. City folks hopped in their cars, boarded a steamship, or bought a train ticket to a destination that promised fresh air and a respite from the daily toils of city life. Increasing numbers of city folks throughout the industrialized United States fled what Michael McNally calls their, quote, “bureaucratized lives in steamy, hot cities for the northern edges of civilization, where they hoped to brush up against something refreshing and authentic.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But early 20th century tourists also brushed up against something they might not have anticipated, and that would be Native people exercising their treaty rights. In fact, state conservation officers had been arresting Ojibwe people and other Native people throughout the state for hunting and fishing on and off the reservations well before the end of the 19th century.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:A Lac Courte Oreilles leader known as Joe White was shot and killed by a game warden in 1894 for hunting deer out of season. Two elderly men from Lac du Flambeau were arrested in 1897 and charged with being in possession of venison off the reservation. And a man named John Blackbird was arrested and convicted in 1901 for setting fishnets on the Bad River Reservation. A few years later, an Ojibwe man named Michael Morrin was arrested for using gill nets to fish in Lake Superior. Morrin argued that his right to fish in Lake Superior was protected by the Treaty of 1854, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 1908 that Wisconsin statehood had abrogated treaty rights.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so I want to pause here for a moment, because it probably feels like I’m telling a couple parallel or even unrelated stories: a story about tourism, a story about industry and the economy, and a story about treaties and treaty rights. But I find that these connections, both among and across these stories, is exactly what makes this history so fascinating, especially as we keep moving through the 20th century and as these contestations continue to occur.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Because the treaties that Native people signed in what is now the state of Wisconsin and across the country are considered the supreme law of the land. Our ancestors could not have foreseen the development of a tourism industry, but they recognized the importance of protecting the right to hunt and fish in the ceded territories. So Ojibwe people across the state continued exercising their treaty rights, and they started asserting their status as tribal citizens and therefore not subject to state law on reservations as early as the 1920s, which is phenomenal.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Lac du Flambeau attorney Thomas St. Germain, who was the first Native lawyer admitted to the bar in the state of Wisconsin, was arguing for treaty rights in court as early as the 1930s. Once again, we have parallel developments happening here. We have the ongoing developments of the tourism industry on one hand, and we have Native people across the state arguing for their treaty-guaranteed rights to hunt and fish on the other.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so as part of, you know, these kind of, these mixing of these industries and of Native sovereignty, you have boosters, for instance, who start pushing for the creation of a national park in the Apostle Islands in the 1920s. But the National Park Service investigator who comes out refused to endorse it, because in that moment, all he saw were the scars in the wake of decades of logging.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But interest in conservation and tourism in northern Wisconsin keeps rising after World War II. A postwar tourism boom filled state parks and campgrounds to the brim, and beaches and hiking trails were increasingly popular. And as you can see here, visits to national parks jumped 86% between 1950 and 1960, and visits to recreational areas jumped 143%. Attendance at Wisconsin state parks grew 250% from 1927 to 1954. The number of state park visitors swelled from 750,000 in 1944 to more than 5 million in 1956.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And in this moment, Congress calls the added pressure on state parks, campgrounds, and recreational areas a crisis in outdoor recreation. James Feldman contends that Wisconsin’s recreation crisis was especially acute because there were a lot of people who believed Wisconsin didn’t even have enough public recreational lands and facilities before this tourism boom in the 1950s.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So some folks turned to one of the state’s gems, the Apostle Islands, to try and solve this problem. Supporters, like Wisconsin’s governor turned senator Gaylord Nelson. I don’t think you can do a talk in Wisconsin if you don’t at least mention Gaylord Nelson. So there you go.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so people like Nelson believed that a national lakeshore in the region would increase tourism and boost the economy through the protection and enhancement of the existing environment for recreational and aesthetic purposes rather than the protection of natural areas in a pristine condition. So the key thing here is that they’re not advocating for, necessarily, preservation, right? They don’t want to leave it exactly the way it is. They’re turning towards conservation and recreation.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So the conditions of a lakeshore, though, also had the potential to affect both Ojibwe livelihoods and the lands that provided food for those who hunted and fished to support their families and communities. And so here, again, using the Apostle Islands as an example, tourism was intended to use and consume nature without the destructive forces of resource extraction. And so outdoor recreation becomes a critical piece of Wisconsin’s mid-20th century tourism industry.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And by the 1960s, as Chantal Norrgard argues, in the interests of promoting tourism, state governments focused on restoring the environment and implementing conservation laws that favored recreation and discouraged commercial or subsistence land use. All right, so that’s the big key here because this is a huge shift from the previous economic focus on logging, quarrying, and commercial fishing. And it’s a really important moment in Wisconsin history because we have all of these movements, right? We have tourism, treaty rights, conservation, and economic interests coming together simultaneously.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But there’s another crisis in the state as well. And so commercial fishing, again, that bastion of regional industry reached what Jane Bush calls its golden years in the 1940s, generating half a million dollars in revenue in 1946 alone. The industry collapsed in the 1950s as sea lamprey targeted whitefish and lake trout, and the last regional fish dealer closed down in 1958. The demise of commercial fishing parallels the rise of regional tourism, and tourism also relied heavily on the sportsmen who came north to fish.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:State attempts to protect fish populations for sportsmen, though, often painted both commercial fishing and Ojibwe treaty fishing as a threat to the environment and the fish populations. And so the questions that swirled around tourism, treaty rights, and industry were connected to land use, land preservation and conservation, and the protection of natural resources.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Because if tourists were to come north to hunt and fish, what would happen if there weren’t any animals in the woods or fish in the lakes and rivers? Where would tourists go? What would tourists do? Would they even have a reason to come north in the first place?

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so for Native people in northern Wisconsin, these questions around tourism and conservation are colliding with both federal Indian policy and their treaty-guaranteed rights. So in the 1960s, northern Wisconsin essentially becomes a battleground for local residents, wilderness advocates, state and federal officials, tourism proponents, and Native nations, as Nelson, who, again, every Wisconsinite knows as the founder of Earth Day, aimed to turn the Apostle Islands into a national recreation area in order to both protect the environment and diversify the tourism economy.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:What’s key here, though, is that proponents wanted to draw tourists to the area by designating the Apostle Islands as a recreational area, right, not as a national park or a wilderness area because outdoor recreation is seen as a way to boost Wisconsin’s economy. For Ojibwe people, though, the development of a national lakeshore had the potential to threaten their use of the land and undermine their treaty-guaranteed rights.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:As early as 1962,The Milwaukee Journalnoted that the lakeshore proposal was, quote, “bound to raised mixed feelings in one familiar with the place.” End quote. Those mixed feelings, which, let’s be real, that’s about as good of a Wisconsin euphemism as you’re ever gonna get, led to years of plans and protests, congressional hearings, newspaper editorials, and even parade floats at the Bayfield Applefest.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The lakeshore debates came at a critical juncture in state tourism initiatives, mounting concerns about environmental degradation and the rise of Native activism and advocacy movements, because you have conservationists who, on one hand, are rallying to, quote, unquote, “save the Apostle Islands,” and you have tourism advocates who are pointing to the economic potential of a national recreation area in the northern Wisconsin. There was a study by a Wisconsin economist that said over 900,000 annual visitors would spend $7 million a year in the region.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But a project of this size, though, couldn’t just happen overnight. Congressional hearings on this proposed lakeshore started in 1967, and this was the first of what would be four total hearings on the lakeshore. And as you can see here, the first was held in Ashland in 1967. The second was in D.C. in March of 1969. The third came back to Ashland in August of 1969. And the fourth and final was in D.C. in the spring of 1970.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The first hearing in Ashland drew politicians, professors, newspapermen, summer residents, non-Native homeowners, attorneys, the presidents of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Fisheries Association yes, that was a thing famed naturalist author Sigurd Olson, and Ojibwe people from Bad River and Red Cliff. The Wilderness Society urged conservationists to attend the hearings or voice their support through letters to government representatives, calling it, quote, “one of the most unique and valuable units in the National Wilderness Preservation System.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so I first learned about the contestations over the lakeshore when I was in graduate school. I have some friends here from grad school who are now professors at the University of Wisconsin, who have heard me talk about this probably ad nauseam by this point, so I apologize, but it fits pretty well here. And so my mom’s brother had sent me some photocopies of newspaper articles from the 1960s, and there were a couple pages of congressional testimony in there too. And so my grandma, Margaret Newago-Pascale, was mentioned in the articles, and she was quoted in the testimony as well.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And I eventually figured out that the testimony my uncle sent me came from the March 1969 hearing, where my grandma and the tribal chairman had flown to D.C. to speak out against the proposal for the lakeshore. And so, there she is. She’s right there in the middle. That’s my grandma.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so as I pored over the thousand-plus pages of testimony in case you’re wondering what historians do for fun in the summer, that’s not it a few names caught my eye from the 1967 hearing. Mrs. Walter Newago and Caroline Newago. And so they shared my grandma’s maiden name, which is somewhat common at Red Cliff, but I didn’t know who they were.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so as I always do when I find a Newago in the archives, I called my mom. And she goes, “Oh, that’s Sis.” And I was, as you might expect, not exactly following. It was a name I recognized, but I had no idea where my mom was going with this. And so, as my mother explained, Sis, whose given name was Myrtle, had married my grandma’s brother, Sammy. And so I remembered, you know, hearing stories about Sammy and Sis. But who the hell was Walter?

Dr. Katrina Phillips:“Oh,” my mom said, “his given name was Walter Samuel, but everybody called him Sammy.” Fair enough, that was one. All right, I had one down. And my mom couldn’t quite figure out who Caroline was, so she said she’d call her sister, she’d call my Aunt Janet, and get back to me.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so I got a call from my mom a few days later, and she goes, “I cannot believe I didn’t think of this. But when I asked Janet who Caroline Newago was, Janet said, ‘Karen, that’s Aunt Carrie.'” And so Carrie had married my grandma’s brother, Vincent. So Sis and Carrie were my grandma’s sisters-in-law.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And I could hear my mom, you know, kind of trying to contain her excitement as she asked if there were any other names she might recognize. So I went, you know, through the table of contents, looking for more Red Cliff folks, and I found Idile Duffy listed in the names of people who offered testimony in 1967. And so that was Sis’s sister, my mom said.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so I called her back a few days later. By now, you are all feeling sorry for her. I’m well aware of that, okay? And I asked her if she had any idea why my grandma, why Sis and Carrie and Idile would have gone to Ashland or flown to D.C. to give their testimony. And she thought about it for a minute, and then she said, “These were the women who would do that. This is what they had to do, so they went and did it.”

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And I’ve thought about that conversation with my mom countless times over the years as I’m doing this research, because all four of these women have walked on, but their testimony lives on as a powerful reminder of their role as advocates for our people. And as an Ojibwe woman, and as someone who studies Native histories, I think a lot about what I’ve come to consider as, you know, kind of quiet activism or the many ways in which people advocate for themselves, their communities, their resources, their lands, their languages, and their cultures.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So two years later, in 1969, my grandma and the tribal chairman at the time, Philip Gordon, flew to Washington, D.C., to testify in the second hearing. And my grandma also spoke at the third hearing in Ashland later that year. While her time at the mic was shorter than it was in D.C., her words still live on in that transcript. “The land,” she told the committee, “is the only thing we can associate our heritage with.”

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So I love this quote, and not just because my grandma said it. That’s part of it, but not the whole thing. Because as a historian, I see it as a beautiful reminder of the historic, the contemporary, and future presence of Ojibwe people in northern Wisconsin.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so the questions around tourism and conservation in northern Wisconsin paralleled the rise of Native activism and advocacy both in the state and across the country. The Native activism and advocacy movements in the 1960s and ’70s are often characterized by the Red Power movement, the takeover of Alcatraz, the creations of organizations like the National Indian Youth Council and the American Indian Movement’s growing national presence. But the roots of Red Power, as Paul Rosier contends, go much deeper than that.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:In northern Wisconsin, contestations over lands and resources often spilled onto reservation lands. In the summer of 1969, Ron DePerry had just come home to Red Cliff after a three-year stint in the Army. There was a lot of talk on the rez about the ongoing arrests of Native people by state game wardens for off-reservation hunting and fishing. Game wardens even came onto the reservations, arresting and jailing Ojibwe people for small offenses like having old deer hides in their sheds.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Another time, DePerry and two other men were harassed by a game warden when they left the reservation to hunt deer. After about 20 minutes, DePerry lit up his pipe. The men told the game warden to either arrest them or let them go. The game warden went chest to chest with DePerry, telling him to, quote, “Keep your mouth shut, DePerry, or I’ll take that pipe of yours and shove it down your” word I cannot say on PBS Wisconsin “throat.” End quote.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:But Ojibwe people in Wisconsin continued to hunt and fish under the terms of the treaties I outlined earlier. Our ancestors claimed these rights for us, and I think the continued exercise of those rights is an incredible testament to their strength and their foresight. The contestations over these rights also underscore the importance of understanding not only treaty rights, but the importance of conservation.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The back-and-forth with state officials culminated in a 1969 protest in Lake Superior. For reasons I haven’t yet uncovered, I haven’t quite figured this out yet, Wisconsin DNR officials announced that Red Cliff and Bad River could no longer fish in Lake Superior. They could fish in the inland rivers and lakes, but their off-reservation rights no longer extended to Lake Superior.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so people at Red Cliff, Bad River, and the other four Wisconsin Ojibwe reservations, Lac Courte Oreilles, Lac du Flambeau, St. Croix, and Mole Lake, decided on a dual show of protest. And so St. Croix men would go out one night to be arrested for hunting off the reservation, and Red Cliff men would set a net in Lake Superior the next day to be arrested for fishing.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:They called the local TV stations. They called the local newspapers to let them know that Red Cliff and St. Croix citizens were going out to test the hunting and fishing rights of the treaties. And so a Red Cliff elder named Franklin Basina lent the Red Cliff fishers two flat-bottom boats to bring in the catch.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so DePerry, Roger Basina, and Allen Bear were in one boat. Red Cliff tribal chairman Philip Gordon, Red Cliff vice chairman Richard Gurnoe, everybody knew him as Dick, and Louis Peterson were in the second boat. And so they hear a boat motor running as they went out to set the net. And so the boat did not have its running lights on, but they could tell from the sound of the motor that it was a game warden’s boat.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so what they did is they called the Coast Guard station in Bayfield to let them know that a boat anchored off the shore of Red Cliff was in distress. And so they watched as the boat turned its running lights on and headed back toward Bayfield. And so it was time to set the net.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so the next day, a crowd gathers when it’s time to take the net out of the water. There were lots of folks from Red Cliff there, including women, including elders, who held signs and banners that proclaimed “Protect Treaty Rights” and “Indian Power.” DePerry remembered seeing representatives from TV stations and newspapers, local fishermen who came to lend support to Red Cliff’s cause, and a group of students from the University of Wisconsin-Superior who had heard about the fish-in.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so the game warden’s boat was there to meet them. The men lifted the net, and Gordon pulled out the only fish they had caught, which was a sucker. Cheers rang out from the shoreline, and the cheers continued as the wardens placed the six men under arrest. The men were taken to the Bayfield County Courthouse, which was filled to the brim with their supporters. The men pleaded not guilty. The case wound its way through the courts until the Wisconsin Supreme Court handed down its ruling in 1972.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:The court ruled that while Ojibwe people did not have the exclusive right to fish in Lake Superior, the state had to prove that any regulations it sought to enforce against Ojibwe fishers had to be reasonable and/or necessary to prevent a significant drop in the fish population.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so, after the state’s decision came down, Ojibwe treaty rights advocacy in northern Wisconsin expanded to both the regulation of tribal fisheries and collaboration with the state. Red Cliff and Bad River joined the Grand Portage and Fond du Lac bands of Minnesota Ojibwe and Michigan’s Bay Mills community to collectively manage their 1854 treaty rights to fish in Lake Superior under the umbrella of the Great Lakes Indian Fisheries Commission in 1982. Okay, so that’s one organization.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And then the six Ojibwe bands in Wisconsin also came together as the Voigt Intertribal Task Force in the wake of another Ojibwe fishing rights case that wound its way through the system. The two organizations, all right, so we’ve got the fisheries commission here, and we’ve got the task force over here. They started holding joint meetings in the spring of 1983, and the two nations, some of which overlapped. Okay, I finally figured it out, but I got there, okay, came together in June of 1984 to create the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, also known as GLIFWC.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so, since its inception, GLIFWC has been tasked with conducting basic scientific research on individual species to determine an annual harvesting limit. It helps its member nations develop conservation enforcement capabilities. It supports tribal attorneys if there is any ongoing litigation. It helps explain the history and practice of Ojibwe treaty rights to the public. And it works to secure funds for all of these tasks.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so GLIFWC continues to undertake intensive studies. They publish multiple reports every year on everything from hunting summaries and species assessments to more recent studies on the cumulative environmental risk of pipelines in the ceded territories and revitalizing conceptions of climate knowledge.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so this photo, this is from Frog Bay Tribal National Park on the Red Cliff Reservation. It’s a picture I took, oh, gosh, not many years ago. Some years ago by this point, okay, when my mom and I went up there. And so as a historian, I love the stories that we find in our individual and collective pasts. And I love how they offer us a deeper appreciation and understanding of the places that mean so much to us.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:Scholar Keith Basso has, perhaps somewhat rhetorically, asked, “What do people make of places?” This question he wrote in 1996, is, quote, “as old as people and places themselves, as old as human attachments to portions of the Earth.” End quote. And I hope that the stories I’ve shared here today have demonstrated not only the importance of treaty rights and tourism, but the ways in which they’ve come to be mostly complementary and not entirely oppositional.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:If you head to northern Wisconsin today, you’ll still see the legacy of these historical moments and movements. The Apostle Islands region is still a renowned destination for tourists, drawing thousands of people each year for everything from the Bayfield Applefest, pictured here, to the sea caves, hiking, kayaking, and camping. Some of my best childhood memories come out of Applefest weekend. Whether it’s, you know, tagging along with my mom and grandma as they picked apples at Erickson’s Orchard, or taking notes of all of the stands selling caramel apples before making my final decision. I’m definitely a purist when it comes to caramel apples, but I appreciate the ingenuity, okay?

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so the Ojibwe presence in the region still reminds us of our past, present, and future. Red Cliff now hosts an annual language camp, and I was fortunate enough to bring my family back for this a few years ago. Our kids got to participate in all kinds of activities. That’s my little one painting right there, my other one playing a game over there.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And I’ll never forget watching them play under the pines on the reservation’s Raspberry Campgrounds. We also played tourist and took our kids on the ferry over to Madeline Island, which I always wanted to do as a kid, and my grandma always said no, so I finally got to do it. And so we toured the museum on the island, which is really well done, and it’s really a testament to the work that the historical society does throughout the state. And one of the volunteers turned out to be the son of one of my grandma’s dearest friends.

Dr. Katrina Phillips:And so our kids and I are suckers for any kind of museum store, all right? And both of our kids conned me. My husband wasn’t there, all right, because they knew I was the weak link. And both kids conned me into buying them a rock. It was, you know, they were probably about like this big. And it has a bear paw carved into it. And so it was one of those moments where the things you teach your kids come back to bite you. Especially because our older one looked at me and he was like, “Aren’t we Bear Clan? Why wouldn’t you want us to have this?”

Dr. Katrina Phillips:So I considered that my additional donation to the Wisconsin Historical Society for the year. But it’s moments like that, that really emphasize the importance of these histories and these stories. And I actually found that bear paw rock in our younger son’s desk the other day, and I couldn’t help but smile. You know, I don’t know how much he remembers from this trip. It was a couple of years ago by this point. But it reminded me that the work we do as historians, as scholars and as activists, always has a purpose. And with that, I will say Miigwech bizindawiyeg noongom. Thank you for listening to me today.

[audience applauding]

[gentle music]