Answers:
With the treaties of 1837 and 1847 signed by the U.S. government,
Indian
nations have retained
their hunting, fishing, and
gathering rights in
these ceded territories, regardless of the methods used (e.g., spear
fishing).
Today, essentially all of this land is now owned
by non-Indian private property owners. Almost all of
Wisconsin's reservations are found in this northern
region, but even on the reservations, much of the land
is now owned by non-Indians, as shown in red on the
Bad River
Indian reservation map.
Do Wisconsin's
Indian tribes exercise
their legal rights throughout the ceded territories?
Answers:
Numerous court cases have defined and restricted the
application of these treaties.
The state of Wisconsin can and does regulate
Indian treaty rights for conservation of resources, including
[Source: Chippewa Off-Reservation Treaty Rights: Origins and
Issues. Madison: Legislative Reference Bureau, Research Bulletin 91-1,
1991.]
Gambling and Wisconsin Indian
Nations
The compacts
that allow the Indians to
operate casinos on tribal land in the state are up for renewal,
beginning in 1998. Governor Tommy Thompson is
prepared to renew the agreements, with a caveat. He wants to
renegotiate a host of other issues between the state and
its Indians at the same time: no concessions, no casinos.
The governor has listed three changes he would like
to see.
First, the state wants a bigger cut of gaming revenues. Little wonder. Visitors to Wisconsin's Indian casinos wager $17 billion a year, yielding revenues of $425m. The state currently takes a paltry $350,000 to cover regulatory costs. Mr Thompson has said that he would like to triple the state's take, at least.
Second, he hopes to curtail the right of tribes to set air-and water-quality standards on their reservations. He claims that, since many non-Indians live on tribal territory, they have to obey environmental decisions they had no hand in shaping. Similarly, rigid tribal standards can affect people and enterprises off the reservation, such as upstream manufacturing plants. But these issues are mere footnotes compared with the third: tribal hunting and fishing rights. Roughly a third of the area that is now Wisconsin was ceded by the Chippewa tribe to the United States government in the treaties of 1837 and 1842 (see map).
The treaties stipulated that the Chippewa would retain hunting, fishing and gathering rights in the ceded territories, a right consistently upheld by federal courts. At present, Wisconsin's Chippewa can fish and hunt on any public land in the ceded territories, taking up to 50% of the "harvestable surplus" of fish and game. Moreover, they may use methods, such as spear-fishing and gill-netting, that are illegal for non-Indians. Non-Indians argue that Indian fishing practices endanger fish stocks and leave fewer fish for other people. Such arguments are largely spurious. The Indian catch is subject, like all others, to state conservation requirements. Nor does tourism appear to have suffered. Fishing-license sales have grown faster in regions with heavy exercise of treaty rights than in those with little or no Indian fishing. Still, spear-fishing -- mostly for slow-moving walleye pike, which spawn in the shallow -- has been an explosive issue over the past decade, in part because it is a privilege reserved for Indians and in part because it is a rather unsportsmanlike practice.
In the 1980s, nearly every Spring brought bitter confrontations between Indians and non-Indians at boat landings throughout northern Wisconsin. Protesters hurled rocks and insults at Indians as they launched their boats, and pasted on their trucks bumper stickers reading, "Save a walleye, spear a squaw." In a statewide survey conducted in 1990 by St Norbert College, 78% of respondents said that relations between Indians and others in Wisconsin were "not so good" or "poor". There are only 40,000 Indians in Wisconsin, less than 1% of the population. The fishing issue has earned the governor political mileage already. In a 1986 election campaign, Mr. Thompson spoke out against "special privileges" for Indians, 150 years of treaty rights notwithstanding. [Source: The Economist, 20 September 1997, p. 29]
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