This month, the US District Court Judge William Conley issued a restraining order against the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa following a tribal decision to close walleye and musky fishing for non-tribal members on some of their lakes. To talk about this decision and the state of Wisconsin’s lawsuit against the tribe, host Esty Dinur is joined by three guests, Araia Breedlove, Gwen Leaffe Carr, Eric Chapman Sr.

The decision to restrict fishing on 19 of the tribe’s most heavily fished lakes was made by Lac du Flambeau fish hatchery managers. Breedlove calls this a conservation effort and says the fish hatchery determined that restrictions were necessary in order to steward the health of the fish in these waters. There is precedent for this effort; back in 2022, the tribe closed Flambeau Lake to everyone, and when the lake reopened to fishing three years later, the walleye had rebounded. Chapman also attests that the tribe retains the management authority of the lakes.

They also discuss the long history of intergovernmental relations between the Lac du Flambeau tribe and other native nations with the state of Wisconsin, including the time of the “walleye wars.” Carr says that tribes have jurisdiction over fishing and hunting from their treaty rights. She says there has been problems in inter-governmental affairs in the state of Wisconsin, which could be mitigated by creating intergovernmental agreements and putting more native people in state government.

Waabinookwe/Araia Breedlove is a proud member of the Waaswaaganing community and the Public Relations Director of the Lac du Flambeau Tribe. She studied at the University of Minnesota and graduated with a journalism degree.

Eric Chapman Sr. is an enrolled member of the Waswaagoning Ojibwe, also known as the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, located in northern Wisconsin. Eric is retired after working for the Lac du Flambeau Tribe for 33 years in the natural resource field, first as project workman, then as a conservation warden and eventually as the chief conservation warden for 25 years. He has also held the positions of emergency management coordinator, climate resilience initiative project director and manoomin (wildrice) enhancement program manager. Eric has been privileged to serve his community as a Tribal Council Member for 12 years and formerly served as a representative to the Voigt Inter-Tribal Task Force with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. He is an active hunter, fisherman and gatherer of the four seasons, relying on practices handed down from generations, while acknowledging the gifts our spirit relatives offer.

Gwen Leaffe Carr is an Indigenous leader, strategist, speaker, and artist with more than three decades of experience in Tribal sovereignty, public policy, democratic participation, and intergovernmental relations. A citizen of the Cayuga Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and a member of the Heron Clan, she spent more than twenty years working closely with Tribal Nations, elected officials, and communities throughout Wisconsin. At the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Gwen founded the first Office of Tribal Affairs, developed the first statewide Tribal Partnership Agreement among the Governor, the Secretary of Transportation, and Wisconsin Tribal leaders — and helped establish the state’s first Tribal Historic Preservation policy, written by Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and embedded into DOT policy.

Gwen later served as Outreach and Oversight Specialist for the $2 billion US 41 transportation project in northeastern Wisconsin, recognized as one of the largest Native-designed, engineered, and constructed projects in the United States. Nationally, Gwen served in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, authored the first White House Report on Urban Indians, and became the first National Political Director for American Indians at the Democratic National Committee, where she founded the Native

American Caucus and helped advance Tribal sovereignty in national political platforms. Gwen held a variety of political positions and she remains deeply connected to Wisconsin and its people and continues her work in Indigenous leadership, governance, storytelling, and the arts.

Featured image of a fishing landing along the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0’).

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The post Fishing Isn’t an Industry, It’s a Lifeway appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

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