Issue 018 · September 6, 2026
Mazina'igan's fall issue reports that Enbridge's Line 5 reroute crew spilled 1,900 gallons of drilling fluid in Iron County near the Bad River Reservation, triggering multiple notices of noncompliance. The piece covers both the Wisconsin reroute fight and parallel developments in Michigan, giving a ceded-territory-wide view of the pipeline's ongoing legal and environmental troubles. This is the primary Native-press account of the spill and belongs alongside the Wisconsin Examiner and WPR coverage you have been tracking.
Issue 018 · September 6, 2026
GLIFWC manoomin specialist Kathleen Smith writes in Mazina'igan that the 2026 wild rice season opened with mixed conditions across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, cautioning that no single weather event or aerial survey tells the full story of a rice bed's health. Her framing is exactly the cyclical, relational approach to time that your books model: the rice teaches us to look at the whole season, not just the headline. This is the kind of grounded, practitioner voice that belongs in the brief.
Issue 018 · September 6, 2026
Approximately 160 representatives from Ojibwe tribes, the State of Wisconsin, and federal agencies gathered at Lac du Flambeau for the 32nd Partners in Fishing event, fishing the Flambeau Chain together and discussing co-management of the ceded territories. The event is a living institution of the Voigt Decision era, a quiet proof that the treaty-rights battles of the 1980s and 1990s produced durable governance relationships. Mazina'igan is the right source for this; the DNR's press release would have told only half the story.
Issue 018 · September 6, 2026
A four-year initiative called LakeCare, backed by a $5 million National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant, is launching to protect aquatic ecosystems in Michigan's 1836 and 1842 Ceded Territories from environmental change and shoreline degradation. The program is described in Mazina'igan as frontline-tribal-led, meaning the conservation priorities are set by the communities whose treaty rights depend on healthy waters, not by state or federal agencies working from the outside in. This is the Seventh Generation principle in institutional form.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
Kathleen Smith, GLIFWC's manoomin specialist, offers the 2026 wild rice harvest preview in Mazina'igan with a framing that Patty will recognize immediately: no aerial photo or single weather event tells the full story of a rice year. The season opened with variable water levels across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Smith's holistic read of conditions is itself a lesson in how Anishinaabe ecological knowledge and Western survey data can work together rather than past each other. Worth reading before the harvest window closes.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
The 32nd annual Partners in Fishing gathering convened roughly 160 representatives from Ojibwe tribes, the State of Wisconsin, and federal agencies at Lac du Flambeau to fish the Flambeau Chain and take stock of co-management in the Ceded Territory. Thirty-two years of this event is itself a data point: the co-management framework forged after the Voigt Decision has become institutional, even as individual disputes (the road easement fight, the recent fishing-restriction ruling) continue to test it. Mazina'igan's coverage names agency leaders and tribal researchers together, which is the right framing.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
Mashkiiziibii Natural Resources Forester Gena Abramson, with community help, put more than 400 giizhik (cedar) trees in the ground along Denomie Creek on the Bad River Reservation, replacing a green ash stand the emerald ash borer has effectively sentenced to death. The creek's name carries its own weight here: Edward DeNomie, Patty's grandfather, is the ogichidaa for whom it is named, and watching his namesake waterway be tended this carefully is the kind of continuity that the Seventh Generation principle is built on. This is Bad River exercising stewardship, not waiting for a crisis.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
Mazina'igan's fall issue gives the fullest account available of where Line 5 stands in both states: in Wisconsin, a reroute crew spilled 1,900 gallons of drilling fluid in Iron County near the Bad River Reservation, triggering multiple notices of noncompliance; in Michigan, the Straits tunnel permit fight grinds on. The spill near Mashkiiziibii is not a footnote. It is exactly the kind of incremental harm that Bad River has been warning about since the easement expired, and it will matter for the next edition of the Ojibwe chapter. Read this alongside the earlier Wisconsin Examiner piece on Great Lakes businesses opposing the tunnel permits.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
A new four-year initiative called LakeCare, funded by a $5 million National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant, is launching to protect aquatic ecosystems in Michigan's 1836 and 1842 Ceded Territories from environmental change and shoreline degradation. The program is tribally driven, with frontline conservation priorities set by the nations whose treaty rights depend on healthy lakes. This is the kind of institutional development that belongs in the Ojibwe chapter's co-management section: a new named program, a significant grant, and a clear connection to the treaty framework Patty has written about for decades.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
Tribal harvesters across Wisconsin reported a strong ogaa (walleye) season, with 33,206 walleye and 208 muskellunge taken collectively, while Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake added another 9,321 walleye to the regional total. The season's success is a testament to the co-management framework built after the Voigt Decision, even as GLIFWC biologists flag the detection of a non-native species in Wisconsin waters as a watch item for coming seasons. Mazina'igan's harvest totals are the primary record.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
GLIFWC Inland Fisheries Section Leader Mark Luehring uses a two-lake comparison in Mazina'igan to show, concretely, how shoreline development degrades walleye habitat in the Ceded Territory: undeveloped shorelines, clean water, and sustainable harvest produce healthy ogaa populations; the alternative produces the opposite. It is the kind of applied science communication that bridges TEK and Western fisheries management without subordinating either. Luehring is a named expert worth tracking for the co-management sections of the Ojibwe chapter.
Issue 016 · August 23, 2026
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a record of decision approving the Line 5 tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, drawing immediate condemnation from tribal nations who say the process failed to honor the federal trust responsibility. NARF, which published this report, notes that Enbridge still needs a new permit from the Michigan Public Service Commission before construction can proceed, meaning the fight is far from over. The approval comes in the same week a federal appeals court ruled Enbridge is trespassing on Bad River tribal lands, a juxtaposition that captures the whiplash quality of pipeline politics in the Great Lakes region.
Issue 015 · August 16, 2026
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a record of decision approving Enbridge's proposed tunnel to reroute Line 5 beneath the Straits of Mackinac, prompting immediate condemnation from tribal nations and the Native American Rights Fund, which noted that Enbridge still requires a permit from the Michigan Public Service Commission before construction can proceed. NARF's statement frames the approval as a violation of the federal trust responsibility to tribal nations whose treaty rights and water depend on the Great Lakes. The timing, arriving in the same week as the trespass ruling, illustrates the whipsaw quality of this fight: a legal win and a regulatory loss in the same news cycle.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
ICT's account of the Seventh Circuit ruling fills in federal appellate context that WPR's piece (covered in Wisconsin Nations) leaves implicit. The court found Enbridge's continued operation of Line 5 across Bad River land constitutes trespass and ordered a reroute on a timeline the court will supervise. The ruling does not immediately halt the pipeline but removes any remaining legal ambiguity about Enbridge's status on tribal land. This is the ruling Bad River has been building toward since the easement expired.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
The Bad River Band and allied environmental groups filed suit this week challenging state and federal approvals of waterway crossing permits for Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through northern Wisconsin. The tribe argues the permits were granted without adequate review of impacts to the wild rice waters and wetlands that define Mashkiiziibii's homeland. This lawsuit runs parallel to the Seventh Circuit trespass ruling and the new injunction request, meaning Bad River is now contesting the pipeline's presence, its reroute path, and the permits that would make construction legal, all at once. WPR's Native American coverage, which has been the most consistent on this beat, broke the story.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
In a ruling NARF called a major victory, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the key permit authorizing Enbridge's proposed tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, requiring the company to restart its application. NARF, which has been central to the tribal legal strategy on the Michigan end of the pipeline, covered this first and most clearly. The decision does not kill the tunnel permanently, but it forces Enbridge to re-do the environmental and regulatory process, buying significant time for tribal nations and advocates who have argued the Straits crossing threatens the Great Lakes. Paired with the Seventh Circuit's Wisconsin trespass ruling this week, Enbridge is now fighting on both ends of the pipeline simultaneously.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
NARF water attorney Daniel Cordalis wrote with unusual directness in his Headwaters Report field notes this week, calling the past week "a bad week for tribal nations" in federal water and land policy. The column surveys a range of federal actions, from monument reductions to water rights rollbacks, that compound one another in ways individual news stories miss. Cordalis writes from inside the litigation, which gives the column a texture that agency press releases cannot match. Worth reading alongside the Line 5 and Chaco Canyon stories this week for a sense of the cumulative federal policy environment.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
On July 15, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy authorized Enbridge to build an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, a decision tribal nations and environmental advocates immediately vowed to appeal. NARF's response, posted the same day, is the sharpest Native-voice accounting available: the permits do not resolve the underlying question of tribal treaty rights in the Great Lakes, and the legal fight is far from over. This is the Michigan-side development that pairs directly with Bad River's Wisconsin waterway lawsuit (above). Read NARF first, then ICT (candidate 38) for the coalition reaction.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
NARF water attorney Daniel Cordalis filed field notes from the Headwaters Report cataloguing a week in which tribal water protections took hits on multiple fronts: the Michigan Line 5 permits, Bears Ears reductions, and federal agency actions that eroded tribal consultation norms. Cordalis writes from inside the litigation, not from a press office, and his tone is measured but clear. This is the kind of practitioner voice Patty values over agency summaries. The Seventh Generation lens applies here with particular force.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
On July 15, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy authorized Enbridge to build an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, a decision that tribal nations and NARF called a betrayal of the consultation process. Bad River and other Great Lakes tribes have argued for years that the tunnel project poses an existential threat to the waters that sustain manoomin and the fisheries protected by treaty. NARF's statement, linked here first, frames the ruling not as a conclusion but as the opening of the next legal front. The fight over whether construction can actually proceed, and on whose terms, is far from over.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
A coalition of more than 200 Great Lakes business owners is calling on Michigan regulators to reject Line 5 tunnel permits, galvanized in part by the drilling fluid spill on Bad River lands, the Wisconsin Examiner reports. The business coalition represents a broadening of the anti-tunnel alliance beyond tribal and environmental groups, which matters politically as the permit fight moves into its next phase. The spill on Mashkiiziibii lands was the catalyst: when Enbridge's equipment fouled Bad River, it handed opponents a concrete, documented harm to point to in regulatory proceedings.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
High Country News reports on an inter-tribal funding workaround that allowed salmon restoration work to continue on Klamath lands after federal dollars were blocked by a bureaucratic catch-22: the Klamath Tribe couldn't qualify for restoration funding because salmon had been absent from their territory for over a century, the very problem the funding was meant to fix. The Yurok Nation's decision to step in as a fiscal partner is a model of tribal-to-tribal solidarity that resonates with how Wisconsin's Ojibwe bands have worked through GLIFWC to protect shared fisheries. For a scholar tracking inter-tribal resource governance, this is a story worth filing.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
A coalition of Great Lakes business owners is pressing the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to reject permits for Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel, citing the drilling fluid spill on Mashkiiziibii lands as the proximate cause of their alarm. The Wisconsin Examiner piece tracks the coalition's growth and the argument that the spill proved what Bad River has said for years: the pipeline is an unacceptable risk to the waters that sustain the region's economy and the manoomin beds that sustain the Ojibwe. The business voice adds a new register to a fight that has long been framed as tribe versus corporation.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
A coalition of more than 200 business owners across the Great Lakes region is calling on Michigan environmental regulators to reject permits for Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel, citing a recent drilling fluid spill on the Bad River as evidence that the project poses unacceptable risk. The businesses are urging other owners to add their names before Michigan's public comment window closes. The spill, on Mashkiiziibii's ceded territory, has sharpened the argument that the tunnel's construction phase is itself a threat to the waters and fisheries the Bad River Band has protected for generations. This one belongs alongside the earlier federal court filings in the Bad River section of the Ojibwe chapter.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund has published a clear-eyed summary of the risks the proposed Line 5 tunnel poses to tribal nations and Indigenous communities, timed to Michigan's open public comment period on the permits. NARF's framing centers treaty-protected fisheries, water quality, and the rights of nations whose ceded territory the pipeline crosses. Patty, if Bad River or any of the Wisconsin Ojibwe bands are submitting formal comments, this is the legal scaffolding they are working from.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
ICT reports that water protectors are preparing to paddle a traditional canoe across the Menominee River, a journey that would be the first of its kind in centuries and a direct assertion of the Mamaceqtaw people's relationship to their river homeland. The paddle is framed as both ceremony and advocacy, timed to ongoing fights over the river's health. This is the kind of story that lives at the intersection of treaty rights, cultural continuity, and the Seventh Generation principle.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
A federal judge has continued the injunction blocking Lac du Flambeau from enforcing its fishing restrictions on the lakes that cross allotment-era roads at the center of the ongoing easement dispute. The ruling keeps the band's access-control strategy on hold while the broader road-dispute litigation works through the courts, and it sits in direct tension with the tribe's sovereign interest in managing its own lands. WPR's coverage, the Native source of record on this beat, is the right place to start.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
The National Indian Law Library has released a curated water-resources guide through NARF's Headwaters Report, covering federal Indian water law, tribal water rights adjudications, and the intersection of treaty rights with water infrastructure disputes. For anyone updating a chapter on Wisconsin Ojibwe treaty rights or preparing for a keynote on sovereignty, this is a practical reference tool, not just a press notice. The guide is particularly useful alongside the ongoing Line 5 and manoomin litigation.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
A federal court has continued its order blocking the Lac du Flambeau Band from enforcing fishing restrictions on nearly twenty lakes in ceded territory, extending a legal standoff that began when the band closed access over allotment-era road easements. The ruling keeps the treaty-rights and road-dispute threads tightly braided: the same land-access grievance that produced the road closures is now shaping how the band can exercise its own regulatory authority over the fishery. WPR's coverage is the source to follow here, and the note Patty flagged on the earlier ruling still applies: this belongs in the LdF section of the Ojibwe chapter, in direct conversation with the road dispute story.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund has posted a direct call to action: Michigan is currently accepting public comment on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 oil tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, and tribal nations and Indigenous communities have long documented the risks the project poses to the waters, fisheries, and natural resources of the Great Lakes. NARF's framing is clear that this is a treaty-rights issue, not merely an environmental one. For Mashkiiziibii, which has fought the Wisconsin segment of Line 5 through the courts, the Michigan permitting process is the next front. Patty, the comment window will not stay open long.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a jurisdictional challenge to the White Earth Nation's permitting process, in a case that tested whether a tribe or the state holds regulatory authority over water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries. NARF's case review frames this as part of a growing conflict with direct implications for Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, whose ceded-territory water rights face similar pressure from non-Indian landowners. The ruling is a quiet but significant win for tribal water sovereignty, and the legal reasoning will matter to anyone tracking manoomin protection cases.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Eighth Circuit dismissed a challenge to the White Earth Nation's authority to regulate water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries, a ruling that NARF's case review frames as part of a growing conflict between tribal regulatory power and non-Indian landowners. The decision matters well beyond Minnesota: the same jurisdictional question sits underneath Wisconsin Ojibwe water governance disputes, including the ongoing tensions over manoomin protection and sulfide mining near rice waters. NARF's analysis is the right place to read this one.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe marked the return of approximately 3,400 acres known as the Cloquet Forestry Center through Minnesota's state bonding bill, a transfer that tribal leaders called historic. Native News Online covered the signing ceremony, which brought together tribal and state officials for what amounts to one of the larger land returns to a Lake Superior Ojibwe band in recent memory. The Cloquet land sits within the Band's ceded territory and has ecological significance for manoomin and other traditional resources. For Patty, this story sits at the intersection of several beats she tracks closely: land back, Lake Superior Ojibwe treaty territory, and the slow, grinding work of restoring what removal took. It is also a useful counterpoint to the pipeline and mining fights: sometimes the land comes back. The piece is worth reading in full alongside the NARF voting rights and IHS funding stories this week, as a reminder that sovereignty is exercised in many registers at once.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The State of Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30, 2026, after the Band issued fishing restrictions on nineteen reservation lakes citing documented declines in walleye and muskellunge populations. The Band's position is straightforward: tribal resource managers are doing exactly what conservation science demands, and the state's lawsuit challenges that authority. Mazinaigan, GLIFWC's publication, is the right source here — it carries the tribal conservation framing that mainstream outlets routinely miss. Patty, this sits directly alongside the earlier federal ruling blocking LdF from restricting off-reservation fishing; the two cases together define a complicated moment for the Band's resource sovereignty.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Preliminary studies and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes show that the aquatic herbicide ProcellaCOR causes elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages — the most vulnerable points in the rice's life cycle. Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are pushing back against continued use of the chemical in ceded territory waters. Mazinaigan carries the data; this is the kind of story that will not appear in mainstream Wisconsin media until the damage is done.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Voigt Intertribal Task Force chair and GLIFWC member tribes are formally pushing back against ProcellaCOR applications in regional waterways, citing potential harm to wild rice, fish, and other subsistence resources. This is the advocacy side of the same story as the field data above — the two pieces together show both the scientific concern and the political response. Mazinaigan again.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin water supplies, with private well owners and tribes explicitly among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. This is a water-sovereignty story as much as an environmental one — tribes have been raising PFAS concerns in their water monitoring work for years.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Iron County, with support from GLIFWC and the Bad River and Lac du Flambeau Bands, purchased 1,051 acres of undeveloped shoreline, uplands, and islands on the Gile Flowage from Xcel Energy for permanent conservation and public access. The acquisition protects waters within the ceded territory and keeps the land from development. Mazinaigan carries the story with the tribal conservation framing it deserves.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected approximately 60 million acres of National Forest land — including significant portions of the Ojibwe ceded territory in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan — from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC's Mazinaigan lays out the tribal opposition with the specificity that the issue demands: these are not abstract wilderness acres but the forests where Ojibwe families hunt, gather, and exercise treaty rights that predate the National Forest system itself. The rollback would open ceded territory forests to the same extractive pressures that the Roadless Rule has held at bay for a quarter century, and GLIFWC's formal opposition letter frames it explicitly as a treaty-rights issue. For the third edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin, this is the kind of federal policy shift that belongs in the environmental and treaty-rights sections of every Ojibwe band chapter — the Seventh Generation lens applies directly here.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
A federal judge has ordered a partial stop to construction on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute through the Bad River watershed, the latest turn in a legal fight that Mashkiiziibii has been waging to protect its manoomin beds and treaty-protected waters. The ruling does not halt all work, and the legal landscape remains unsettled, but it is the kind of concrete, court-ordered pause the Band has been pressing for. We tracked Bad River's original motion to stop reroute construction in an earlier issue; this is the follow-on. Watch WPR for updates as the injunction scope becomes clearer.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The State of Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30 after the tribe imposed fishing restrictions on 19 reservation lakes, citing documented declines in walleye and muskellunge populations. The tribe's position is straightforward: the fish are struggling and the Band has both the sovereign right and the ecological obligation to act. Mazinaigan, which broke this story in the Ceded Territory press, notes that the state's lawsuit arrives even as tribal fisheries data drives the conservation concern. This is the inverse of the usual posture, and it sits directly alongside the road-dispute litigation that has already strained LdF-state relations.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribes explicitly named among those eligible for grant funding to address private well contamination. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been found near tribal communities. The intersection of water quality, treaty-protected resources, and tribal sovereignty makes this more than a general environmental story.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are escalating their opposition to ProcellaCOR, an aquatic herbicide being used in Ceded Territory lakes, citing preliminary studies showing elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating leaf stages. Voigt Intertribal Task Force Chair is quoted directly in Mazinaigan's coverage, which also notes field data from 14 Wisconsin lakes suggesting harm to wild rice beds. The Seventh Generation question here is not abstract: manoomin is both a treaty-protected resource and a living relative, and the data is pointing in a troubling direction.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The current federal administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected roughly 60 million acres of National Forest land from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC and its member tribes have formally opposed the rollback, arguing that roadless areas within the Ceded Territory are integral to the wild rice, fisheries, and gathering resources that treaty rights guarantee. The connection to sulfide mining risk in northern Wisconsin is direct.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
A federal judge ruled against the Lac du Flambeau Band's attempt to restrict non-tribal fishing on nineteen reservation lakes, finding the tribe had not met the legal standard for such restrictions. The Band had cited declining walleye and muskellunge populations as the basis for the closures. The ruling lands in the same week as the DOJ roads brief, compounding pressure on the Band from multiple federal directions.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan, GLIFWC's newspaper, reports that Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30 after the tribe issued fishing restrictions on nineteen reservation lakes, citing walleye and muskellunge declines. The tribe's conservation concerns are real: GLIFWC data shows long-term population stress in some northern lakes. This is the Native-source account of the same dispute the federal court ruling addressed.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan reports that the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are escalating their opposition to ProcellaCOR, an aquatic herbicide used in Ceded Territory lakes, citing preliminary data showing elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages. The Voigt Intertribal Task Force is involved, and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes is raising red flags. This is a manoomin-protection story that sits squarely in Patty's treaty-rights and wild-rice beats.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Governor Evers signed legislation directing $125 million to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribal communities explicitly included among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. The funding is meaningful but the contamination problem it addresses is not going away.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's interview with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader makes the case that the priorities of the Ojibwe bands and their neighbors are distinct from the rest of the state, organized around treaty rights, manoomin, and the particular ecology of the Northwoods rather than the policy concerns that dominate Madison and Milwaukee. The framing, 'north of Highway 29 is its own country,' is a useful shorthand for what Patty's Ojibwe chapter has always argued. Lead with the tribal voice here.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
A federal judge ruled this week that the Lac du Flambeau Band cannot restrict non-tribal fishing on approximately twenty lakes within its territory, a decision that touches directly on the ongoing tension between tribal resource management authority and off-reservation public access claims. WPR reported the ruling. The legal reasoning matters here: whether the court grounded its decision in treaty rights, state law, or something else will shape how far the ruling reaches and whether it invites further challenges to tribal fisheries management across the ceded territories.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR's conversation with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader this week surfaced the persistent frustration that state and federal policy is made by people who rarely travel north of Highway 29, let alone understand what treaty-protected resources mean to communities whose livelihoods and spiritual lives depend on them. The framing is one Patty, you will recognize from your own fieldwork: the geography of neglect is not accidental. The piece is worth reading alongside the Line 5 and fishing-restriction stories as a reminder of the political context in which those legal fights unfold.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native Sun News Today flags that South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson's federal bills to expand Missouri River water use for the state do not address the question of who actually holds water rights in that river system, a question that implicates multiple Oceti Sakowin nations whose treaty territories the Missouri runs through. The piece is a good example of the kind of story that only a Native publication is likely to frame this way: the mainstream coverage of the same bills would almost certainly not lead with tribal water rights.
Background
· 2022
· indigenous-climate-resilience-network
Research across the Great Lakes region has confirmed that manoomin is now declining roughly 5 to 7 percent annually due to drastic precipitation shifts and rising temperatures, and the species has been deemed the most vulnerable food throughout Anishinaabeg territories. The Bad River sloughs, which hold the largest remaining coastal wild rice bed on the Great Lakes, face accelerating heat, lake-level fluctuation, and algal blooms. Tribal nations are leading restoration grounded in Traditional Ecological Knowledge while agencies belatedly learn from elders.
Background
· 2021
· doe-indian-energy
In May 2021 the Bad River Band completed Ishkonige Nawadide, a 500-kilowatt solar array paired with more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours of battery storage powering the Health and Wellness Center, the wastewater treatment plant, and the Chief Blackbird Administration Building. The project was a direct response to the July 2016 flood that knocked out power across the reservation for days and damaged critical infrastructure. Funded through the Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy.
Background
· 2015
· ICT (Indian Country Today)
On March 24, 2015, Gogebic Taconite president Bill Williams pulled the company's preapplication for the 4.5-mile open-pit iron mine that would have produced eight million tons of taconite annually over the Bad River watershed. Six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, led by Bad River, had organized the EPA review and grassroots resistance that surfaced the wetlands the company claimed did not exist. Williams cited 'unexpected extensive wetlands' and EPA permit uncertainty.
Background
· 2012
· ramsar
On February 2, 2012, the Kakagon and Bad River Sloughs received Ramsar designation as a Wetland of International Importance, the first such site owned by a tribal nation in the United States. The 16,000-acre complex holds the largest natural wild rice bed on the Great Lakes and the last extensive coastal manoomin bed in the region, critical to the genetic diversity of Lake Superior wild rice. Designation came after years of stewardship work with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association and partners.
Background
· 2003
· itep
In a closing chapter of the long Crandon Mine fight, the Forest County Potawatomi Community partnered with the Sokaogon Chippewa Community to purchase the proposed mine site from Nicolet Minerals, ending decades of threat to the wild rice waters between Mole Lake and the Wolf River headwaters. The tribes hold the land in trust. Walter Bresette's organizing coalition, the Midwest Treaty Network, had built much of the resistance that made the buyout possible.