Traditional Values: Mooningwanekaaning-minis Anishinaabeg Maawanji’iding—Madeline Island Anishinaabeg 
Gathering
The Madeline Island Anishinabe Gathering on Friday, September 25, 2009, was a remarkable weekend of reunions and networking, serious talks, festive meals and a ceremonial dance on Friday night. The island’s first name was Moningwanekaaning-Minis, the place of the golden-shafted flicker, and was the place the Lake Superior Anishinabe came to (returned to, some say) in their great migration in the early 1400s, before spreading out into the lands, now reserves, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and beyond. The organizing group for this autumn 2009 reunion gathering was the Madeline Island Anishinaabeg Gathering Committee with resolutions of support from the Town of LaPointe, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, Bad River Band of Ojibwe, and others. The town of La Pointe passed a resolution welcoming Anishinaabeg again to this island in Lake Superior, and the community of La Pointe provided a wonderful lunch to everyone. “It was wonderful that the townspeople fed everyone,” said Lorraine Norrgard, one of the organizers, “and the committee fed everyone back—a beautiful exchange of food offerings.”
The gathering began on Friday morning with a Pipe Ceremony by honored Red Cliff elder Leo LaFernier and then a water ceremony led by Sue Nichols (Bad River Ojibwe). This was followed by morning and afternoon presentations on the importance of the Island to the Anishinaabeg in the past, present and future, featuring respected leaders and elders including Professors Joe Rose and Dr. Rick St. Germaine, activist and author Winona LaDuke, tribal leader Henry Buffalo Jr., and Robert Van Zile (of Mole Lake), all emceed by Jason Schlender (Anishinabe). Paul Demain (Onieda,/Anishnabe and the editor/publisher of News from Indian Country) also spoke and NfIC live-streamed the speeches over the Internet. The Oshkii Giizhik Singers (Native American women singers from the Fond du Lac/Duluth area) performed, and Frank Montano (Red Cliff) sang, told stories and added flute music to the serenity of the island that day. The sharing circle from the audience also brought forth stories, comments, and current issues from Chippewa grassroots activists today, including Butch Stone and Gene Artishon who retold the story of blocking the sulfuric acid trains on the Bad River reservation in July 1996 and thereby stopping the White Pine mine that would have drained into Lake Superior.
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The day-long talks concluded with a traditional feast and a ceremonial dance that invited several drums and dancers from the 19 Anishinabe bands. That night dancers in full regalia from the U.S. and Canada danced again on the historic homeland island. Saturday, September 26 events included a free Open House at the Madeline Island Museum (remodeled in recent years), with displays from Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission’s and from Winona LaDuke’s Native Harvest, a showing of a GLFWC film by Lorraine Norrgard on the Sandy Lake tragedy, and a museum film on the history of Madeline Island. The National Eagle Center brought an eagle as a full participant in the gathering—an eagle that will never fly again due to injuries from mercury poisoning and automobile injury—which led the grand entry of the Friday evening dance. The Oshkii Giizhik Singers did an encore at the Saturday event. While I was standing in front of the series of museum paintings depicting Chief Buffalo’s famous 1854 trip to D.C. to undo the Removal Order, I spoke to Henry Buffalo, Jr., a direct descendent, and asked if the family was OK with the portrait of Chief Buffalo on the cover of the Walleye Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Rights book. His reply was, “The more people who see that image, the better.”
The speeches I heard and other conversations I had were very helpful in furthering my own ally’s understanding of what sovereignty means in the modern era. This also relates to the question public school teachers face in how to teach Wisconsin Indian culture and treaty history without reinforcing the stereotype of Native Americans as merely historic peoples (not around anymore). Robert Van Zile said, “Sovereignty means building the inner structure of how we will live in this society today…the medicine lodge, the big drum, ceremonies with family, the teaching lodge, language and prophecies, … and tribal schools with Anishinabe curriculum.” Winona LaDuke also raised these self-determination issues for today, particularly renewable energy technologies as democratic, locally-controlled economics, Native gardens (food sovereignty), and freedom from genetically engineered food, particularly commercially-grown “tame” rice, as she calls it.
Many speakers alluded to the late Walt Bresette, Red Cliff Chippewa organizer and activist. (Walt took Winona over to the island for her first visit; she now owns land and gardens there). During Butch’s and Gene’s retelling of the train-tracks mining protest, they recalled Walt’s organizing style: “Come on; we’re going to stop a mine today.” Walt’s political handprint seemed all over the event to me, and even the cadence of his storytelling could be heard in Professor Rose’s and that chuckle of Walt’s was echoed in his cousin’s laughter. Walt’s daughters were there, Claudia celebrating her birthday that day, and Katy there with her son, Braedon, and her brand-new baby girl, Leila. Some discussions continue on a Walt Bresette library (or room within the proposed Mishomis Center Library at University of Minnesota, Duluth). Walt’s family—Cass Joy and their children, Claudia, Katy, and Robin Walter Bresette—want to honor Walt’s memory by attaching his legacy to his community, the Red Cliff Band. “We have been discussing this since he passed on, and we are not sure what form it will take, but as the children become adults, it becomes increasingly their right and their legacy,” says Cass. “We want to support and celebrate the leadership of this new generation, particularly the women, who are coming into their own, regaining their Ojibway language and culture and passing it on to the next generation, their children.”
There were other spirits present as well on Madeline Island: the sacred sites—the old Anishinabe cemetery of grave-houses and tombstones; the Sandy Lake Memorial boulder; and the old burials under the tourist golf course there. Sacred Sites Run members Kathy Lichterman (Anishinabe), Starr Bresette (Anishinabe), and I were given a tour by a local supporter of his place and the woods with mint and hawkweed, his huskies race team and year-round “Alaska” cabin, and at a different location, a ring of cedars of uncertain meaning. The island stories and lessons of old leadership struggles and music and drumming were swirling around the weekend there.
Rick Whaley, October/Nov. 2009
Photo by Bob Albee
IndianCountryNews.com has a few Nick Vander Puy interviews from that special weekend which was the anniversary of the signing of the 1854 treaty on the island: on the iTV link under “Educational” (see interviews with Robert van Zile; Winona LaDuke, and Gerald Perry.) Under “Political Issues” on the NfIC iTV site, see also the Henry Buffalo interview on “Tenacity for Ojibwe Treaty Rights” from the Summer 2009 GLIFWC Treaty Rights conference).
Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) via www.glifwc.org/publications
Food Sovereignty update: Ben and Dona Yahola played important centering and spiritual roles at the 2nd annual Growing Food and Justice Initiative in Milwaukee in October. Ben is next in Prior Lake, Minnesota for the “Shakopee Food and Homelands Conference,” this Nov. 18-21, 2009, where he will present on a panel and lead regional break-outs discussing Mvskoke Sovereignty work on restoring food economies. Conference Co-Chairs: Dr. Dan Wildcat (Haskell Indian Nations University) & Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth)
See flier at www.nativepeoplesnativehomelands.org