Wisconsin Walleye War
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Civil unrest erupted in Wisconsin after U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb handed down a ruling on August 21, 1987 that affirmed the right of six Chippewa tribal governments to regulate their members' hunting and fishing outside of the reservation boundaries. The events were chronicled in at least two books and in a Mother Jones cover story as Wisconsin's Walleye War.
The unrest after Crabb's 1987 decision escalated so that then Governor Tommy Thompson mobilized the state's Division of Emergency Government to form a Treaty Rights Task Force. During the spring walleye spawning seasons of 1989, 1990 and 1991 the task force deployed hundreds of police officers from around the state to help local sheriffs maintain order at lakes where Chippewa members began exercising their newly-recognized rights. Hundreds of protesters lined boat landings to make their case that tribal members enjoyed "special rights" under Crabb's decision. Shouting slogans such as "timber niggers," sometimes throwing rocks at tribal fishers and at the officials assigned to protect them, many of the protesters attempted to physically stop the tribal fishing. Protesters launched boats and circled the tribal fishers at high speed on the water, attempting to upend the tribal fishers who stood in their boats to spear fish under lamp-light. Others participated in mass arrests, at least one of which degraded into a melee when police moved to seize sound amplification devices from protest leaders.
Counter-protesters organized in 1990 to rally in support of the tribal fishing expeditions. A cadre of activists from southern Wisconsin cities and from the Twin Cities of Minnesota trained witnesses to document the unrest at the boat landings. Convoys of activists from the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis also joined the protests, bringing native drums to sound above the din of emergency power generators and protesters' chants.
The conflict started almost two decades earlier when two members of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of the Ojibwe Nation crossed a reservation boundary that divided Big Round Lake, cut a hole in the ice and harvested fish with spears, contrary to Wisconsin state laws. In a class taught by attorney Larry Leventhal, the members had learned their band held by treaty an unresolved claim to off-reservation hunting and fishing rights in the northern part of the state. The members were arrested and a Sawyer County judge convicted them of poaching.
Lac Courte Oreille joined the legal fight on behalf of the two tribal members. The case made its way to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear the state's argument that a lower court ruling upholding the treaty rights should be reversed. After the highest court refused to reverse the Seventh Court of Appeals' decision upholding the rights, five other Chippewa bands joined Lac Courte Oreilles' legal action. The Seventh Circuit sent the case back to U.S. District Court with instructions to determine the scope of the treaty rights and to resolve conflicts surrounding how the off-reservation resource harvests should be regulated.
In settling questions about regulation of off-reservation hunting and fishing, Crabb ruled the state could intervene to protect natural resources, but that tribes first had the right to establish their own regulatory system, if they showed the court their system was as protective of the resource as was the state's system. After detailed scientific testimony, Crabb approved a natural resource code adopted by the six tribal governments, which allowed members to harvest walleye and other fish using traditional methods during the spawning season, when lakes are closed to state-licensed anglers.
The spring spearfishing season started somewhat peacefully in 1988, but in late April, residents and visitors of Park Falls, Wisconsin rallied at Butternut Lake, where a band of fishers led by former Lac Du Flambeau judge and council member Tom Maulson (later pictured on the cover of Mother Jones) led a fishing expedition. The crowd pressed against the fishers, the tribal wardens and the few state game wardens who were there, pushing them toward the water. Local police declined to render mutual aid and the standoff lasted until a convoy of more neutral officers raced from Superior, Wisconsin, almost 100 miles distant, and fought their way through the crowd to rescue the fishers and game wardens.
The 1989 fishing season started with the vivid memory of April, 1988 fresh in the minds of fishers, public officials, anti-treaty protesters and residents of Northern Wisconsin in general. Thompson, a Republican governor, ordered the emergency government task force to do what it takes to keep the peace, but a Republican Party leader encouraged party members to support or even join the protests. Dressed in riot gear, police more accustomed to breaking up fights at Milwaukee sporting events stood shoulder to shoulder, often three deep, with sticks and shields ready to stop the crowd if they pressed past snow fences hastily erected for crowd control.
Protests subsided in 1991 as a result of developments on several fronts. Lac Court Oreilles had not been the target of any protests, primarily because of long-standing social relationships between tribal leaders and local resort owners. The two sides recognized potential for conflict in their communities, but each agreed to control those of their allies who might incite unrest. After two years of spring-time protests at and around Lac Du Flambeau, and around expeditions by members of the other four bands, Lac Courte Oreille leaders and their resort-owner friends participated in a public meeting with Minocqua area residents and Lac Du Flambeau members in which they discussed the Lac Courte Oreille truce. Protest leaders had lost considerable prestige by reports of racially motivated chants, gunshots, an occasional pipe bomb and frequent rock throwing and sling-shot attacks. Also, in 1991, newly-elected Attorney General James Doyle (now Wisconsin governor) reached an agreement with the six tribes in which neither the state nor the Chippewa would further appeal the federal court rulings. The state legislature also passed a hunters' protection law, and a law requiring schools statewide to include information about local tribes in history and geography curricula.
References
- New Resource Wars by Al Gedicks
- Walleye Wars by Walt Bressette