Rez Life

by David Treuer

  Beginning in the 1970s the lake started on a boom-and-bust cycle, which should have been seen as a warning sign that the lake was trembling under the pressure of fishing. Some years the fish were caught by the hundreds of thousands, as they had been for centuries. In other years the fishing wasn’t so good. No one listened to the lake—not the Red Lakers netting fish in the south and not the sport anglers catching them with hook and line in the north. No one listened to other lakes where the same thing had happened.

  There are two other large, shallow sandy lakes in Minnesota that once supported huge fisheries—Lake Winnibigoshish on the Leech Lake Reservation and Lake Mille Lacs, closer to Minneapolis. Both lakes were overfished and eventually collapsed; they yielded next to no walleye—but not before the same erratic pulse, the same boom-and-bust cycle, was evident. Neither lake has ever come back to the levels of fish and fishing it once supported.

  Fishing continued on Red Lake in the 1970s and 1980s as before. There seemed to be no end to the fish. By the early 1990s the RLFA membership had swelled from 200 to 700. The annual harvest stood at 1 million pounds, with an estimated additional 1 million pounds of walleye sold on the black market. Gary and Jane Bymark own a resort on the northern shore of Red Lake, off the reservation. Gary said in an interview that he watched pickup trucks drive past with walleye mounded up in the back so high he could see them from behind the bar. He also remembered Red Lakers coming into the white-owned resort to sell fish: “Like when you’re sitting at the bar here, and any one of them Indians come in and say we got walleye for a dollar a walleye, cleaned and everything, they’re going to buy them. Two or three guys would come in here and walk out with a hundred walleyes.”

  A few hundred walleye were small change. One former fisherman told me he would gut his fish, pack them in the trunk of his car, and drive the five hours to Minneapolis, where he sold the fish to the Asian markets. The Hmong were the best customers, he said. They wanted the whole fish—head, fins, tail—not just fillets. So it was easier and you got more poundage. He’d dicker with them and threaten to cross from north St. Paul over to Minneapolis and sell them to the Chinese and Koreans instead. The Hmong would hurriedly buy the entire load at three dollars a pound: three times what he was paid by the RLFA.

  Fish came to function as a kind of currency. In the early 1980s my mother, a lawyer then in private practice, was paid in fish; one client gave her 500 walleye fillets and his JVC stereo to settle his bill. “If you didn’t have a job, set nets, sell fish,” says Greg Kingbird, a spiritual leader and lifelong resident of Ponemah. “Make enough money, sit back for a few days. Run out of money, go set again. That was a way of life. You could go out there any day, get something to eat.” Also, the sport fishing on the north end of the lake was out of control. Ed Hudec, a resort owner near the town of Washkish on the north shore of Red Lake, remembers seeing 10,000 boats on Upper Red Lake during the fishing opener in mid-May.

  All this came to an end in 1996. That was when the last mature and healthy year-class of fish was taken from the lake. Instead of millions of pounds, fishermen were able to take only 15,000 pounds in total. It was a disaster. The fish were gone. In 1997 Red Lake stopped commercial fishing, and a year later it closed subsistence fishing as well. In 1999 the state of Minnesota followed suit and closed state waters in Upper Red Lake to sport fishing. A moratorium was in effect. The band and the state would try to bring the fish back.

  Red Lake’s sovereignty had, in some ways, led to this. The band could determine—without consulting the state or anyone else—how much fish could be taken and in what ways and by whom. And, as many Red Lakers admit, greed was allowed to run its course.

  So there is sovereignty, but of a special kind. Tribes can’t keep standing armies (though some have done so). They can’t issue their own currency (though some have done this, too). Most can’t have border patrols and can’t require passports (though some, including Red Lake, do or did). In July 2010, the Iroquois national lacrosse team—which has been traveling to lacrosse tournaments around the world on Iroquois Confederacy passports for thirty years—was barred from traveling to Britain on these passports because of newer restrictions stemming from the Patriot Act. The team refused to use U.S. passports and in the end missed competing in the championship of the sport the Iroquois invented.

  When Floyd “Buck” Jourdain was voted in as chairman of Red Lake in 2004, he saw the plight of the fisheries and what it meant for Red Lake—for its economic health and its sovereignty—as the biggest challenge facing the tribe. Instead of pulling in and protecting the reservation from outside scrutiny, the Red Lake Band launched an aggressive program, along with the state of Minnesota, the federal government, and local resources, to restock the lake. It was a long process. The participants assessed water quality, breeding habitat, and genetically tested fish to find which strains were best suited to Red Lake’s waters. They had to enforce a strict ban against fishing on Upper and Lower Red Lake. Between 1999 and 2004 Red Lake and the state of Minnesota dumped more than 105.2 million walleye fry into Red Lake. By 2004 the fish were reproducing on their own. And hook-and-line fishing (not commercial netting) reopened on Red Lake in 2005.

  It was in these troubled waters that Jerry Mueller and his son-in-law crossed onto Red Lake Reservation. After Jerry Mueller’s boat was confiscated in May, Citizens for Truth in Government threatened a blockade of Red Lake unless the tribe effectively gave up its sovereignty. Many people, from Republican hopefuls to white anglers and resort owners, were still upset at what they saw as Red Lake’s mismanagement of its waters. Michael Barrett and Doug Lindgren leaned on the federal government to intervene—clearly trying to make Red Lake a campaign issue in the elections during the fall of 2006. The situation came to a head on August 14, 2006, when Michael Barrett, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 7th District, scheduled a speech at a fund-raiser in Bemidji. The fund-raiser was held at the Rotary Pavilion on the Bemidji waterfront, where Indian burial mounds had been razed in the 1920s to make room for a fairground. About forty-five people sat on folding chairs in the pavilion while forty more, mostly Indian, stood outside, ready to question Barrett about Red Lake. Barrett—a pharmacy manager—didn’t show up. He had planned to announce his desire for the federal government to enforce a 1926 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that the state of Minnesota had jurisdiction over a drained lake bed within the ceded territories but not on the Red Lake Reservation itself. It was an obscure ruling that in no way spoke to the sovereignty of Red Lake. Barrett, Lindgren, and Citizens for Truth in Government had been using this case as ammunition to shoot down Red Lake’s sovereignty despite the response by the state and federal government that it didn’t apply.

  Although Barrett didn’t show up, Doug Lindgren did. He raised the issue and got into a shouting match with the Red Lake Nation tribal historian and tribal secretary Kathryn “Jodi” Beaulieu, who called Lindgren and his position racist.

  Other Republicans present tried to backpedal and distance themselves from Barrett and Lindgren. “He went about it in the same way Mike is going about everything—head down and head first, like a bull in a china shop,” said the chairwoman of the Beltrami County Republicans, Kath Molitor. Mark Kennedy of the U.S. House of Representatives was surprised by the hubbub and didn’t know how to answer questions about Red Lake’s sovereignty. He said he’d never been to Red Lake but would love to visit. This gave the fiery Red Lake treasurer, Darrell Seki, the opening he needed. Seki is from Ponemah, is a fluent speaker of both English and Ojibwe, and is not known, generally, for holding his tongue or for keeping his opinions to himself. He’s a fighter, not a diplomat—and with his severe face, shaded glasses, and glossy hair, he cuts an imposing figure. “Any non-members are welcome to come to our lake,” he said in response to Kennedy, “and I hope they bring their equipment, because our DNR [Department of Natural Resources] needs equipment. Tell the non-members to come
to our lake—we’ll arrest them. We’ll take their equipment, too.” He concluded by saying, “It’s our lake, it will stay our lake. We, as a Tribal Council, will protect our lake and our people. All the lands are ours and we are going to protect them.” One got the feeling that Seki had stopped just short of saying “by any means necessary.” What was clear was that Lindgren and Barrett, under the mask of favoring “fairness” and opposing “special rights,” were trying to turn Red Lake into a campaign issue. Red Lake Reservation, with nearly 10,000 members, is a huge voting bloc in the region and has the highest voter turnout in the entire county: according to some statistics, more than 90 percent of Red Lakers go to the polls. Of these, 90 percent vote Democratic. Reservations, after all, are covered by congressional districts, county districts, and sometimes local government as well. And while enrolled band members of tribes can vote in tribal elections, they are also U.S. citizens and can vote in the same elections as their non-Indian neighbors.

  As these campaign issues raged, there were other elections under way that summer. Buck Jourdain was running for a second term as tribal chairman against the tribal secretary Judy Roy. On July 19, 2006, Jourdain defeated Roy by a margin of seventy-one votes. Shortly thereafter, a Red Lake tribal member, Archie King, filed a complaint with the General Election Board alleging that Jourdain had bought votes and had used tribal funds for his campaign. The board agreed and ruled that a new runoff between the candidates was in order. Jourdain not only denied the allegations but said that the General Election Board did not have the right to call a new election. As for the complaint, Jourdain said that the “election was fair and my campaign was conducted in accordance with all election laws.” Furthermore, he argued, “According to the Red Lake election code . . . all challenges must be submitted and received within five days of the public posting [of election results] by the General Election Board.” The election issue was covered in the local paper, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and in the New York Times. Ultimately, the candidates squared off again. Jourdain won.

  What is clear is that, taken together—the mismanagement of the lake and the fish, problems with the police force, election disputes—all missteps and even the perception of incompetence, let alone corruption, do threaten the sovereignty of a place like Red Lake. Whenever something does go wrong—and things go wrong all the time—­someone raises the issue of sovereignty and suggests it should be done away with. But then again, all nations make mistakes. During the lobbying scandal involving Jack Abramoff, the Enron affair, Iran-contra, Teapot Dome, and the Whiskey Ring, to name a few, no one said, “Well, clearly the Americans can’t manage their own affairs; it would be best if the United States reverted to British control and became, once again, part of the British Empire.” And people often forget: the only reason there were fish to overfish in the first place (and the only reason the fish have been able to come back so strongly) is that since Red Lake is a closed reservation, there is no development on most of its shoreline—there are no sewage treatment plants, no resorts, no houses perched along the shore, no vacationers pulling up the bulrushes and cattails, no fertilized and pesticide-drenched lawns. Everyone has Red Lake and its leadership to thank for that.

  No wonder that Mueller was not cut any slack: the boat was taken, he was summoned, and Red Lake stood its ground. Reflecting back on the case, Grolla seems proud to serve Red Lake and the community he calls his own. “We’ve got a mind-set, you know. It stretches all the way back to when we fought the U.S. government, when we fought the Sioux. We’re used to warfare. We’re used to fighting. That’s who we are. People talk about how we’re a gentle people, you know. How we respect everything. We do, but we’ve had to fight for it. It’s kind of a curse sometimes, you know. I mean, hypothetically, let’s say a girl gets raped Back of Town [a neighborhood in the village of Red Lake] and then her brothers take after the guys who did it, beat them up, burn their house down. Then the perp’s family comes after the girl’s family and on and on it goes. They fight until people are in the ground and nothing is left standing unless you catch them and arrest them and stop it before it really gets going. That attitude, that fighting attitude, goes back to Chief Bagonegiizhig and Changing Feather, back to those guys. Maybe it needs to change. But it’s kept us alive, too. We’re alive because we don’t back down. There’s a message in that, maybe.”

  In the end, Jourdain was reelected, the Republicans lost their elections, and the Democrats won (largely because of the support they received from Indians in northern Minnesota). There was no flotilla of angry fishermen. Citizens for Truth in Government has not been able to persuade the state of Minnesota or the federal government to change its attitude to Red Lake, which still exists on a government-to-government basis, as all sovereign nations relate to one another. Jerry Mueller appeared in Red Lake Tribal Court in October 2006. He probably felt the way Indians on the rez feel all the time: surrounded, outnumbered, and unloved by people different from himself. He argued his case, and his defense was based on “Officer, I didn’t know and I’m sorry.” He lost. He paid his fine, and if he has fished on Red Lake since then, he has probably stayed far away from the reservation boundary. Terry Maddy was wrong. Red Lake can have its fish and eat it, too.

  Sean Fahrlander and his son Aatwe, 2009

  Courtesy Brooke Mosay Ammann

  2

  “Just dump it in,” Sean is saying to his brothers Marc and Mike. The light is fading, and the wind is coming strong off the big lake: Lake Mille Lacs. It’s April, and the ice has retreated from the shore but the water is soupy with it. When the wind pushes the crushed ice up against the larger unbroken plates out in deeper water, it makes a raspy tinkling sound.

  Sean is tall, with large hands, perfect for gripping nets. He was a basketball star in high school, joined the navy, and worked as an air traffic controller on an aircraft carrier. I don’t know if the job was good for him. “You wouldn’t have recognized me back then. My shit was squared away A-1 tight. I was correct. Everything in place. Not like now.” Not like now. His hands shake (“Goddamn allergies,” he says). He is nervous (“Goddamn steroids, they really fuck me up”). He is a little high-strung (“PTSD is a bitch, man, a real bitch”). He also talks a lot, more than most people and certainly more than most Indians. In a rush, his words tumble over themselves, each one apparently anxious to reach the finish line—your ears—before the next. He’s an excellent ricer, and can fillet a walleye faster than anyone else I know. (“Talk to a Chippewa and you’ll end up talking about two things: fish and beaver.”) Be that as it may, Sean’s the only Indian I know who is conversant on topics ranging from storytelling to how to tap a maple tree, the meaning of life, how to hit an alternator with a hatchet so it works, the design of the National Museum of the American Indian, Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet, ancient Greek warfare, what’s wrong with Indians today, string theory, how to tell the best “drunk story,” and Genghis Khan. I think the idea of not knowing something hasn’t occurred to him yet. When you talk to Sean the conversation always finds its way back to Sean. He is, however, generous with his time and energy. Life is much better with him in it—and that’s not something you can say about everyone. Once I bought a decrepit Airstream in Wisconsin. He helped me load it onto the back of a twenty-foot beavertail trailer. We got it strapped down and he looked at me sideways: “You’ll never make it back to Minnesota alone. I’m going with you.”

  “How are you gonna get home?”

  “Fuck if I know. Just let me run home and grab some underwear and I’m good to go.”

  He was right—I couldn’t have done it without him.

  Sean can find something funny in just about every encounter, and he has an agile mind. He’s just over forty and his hair is receding a little and is peppered with gray. His laugh comes easily except when he’s “in a mood,” at which time he’ll say, “Don’t fucking talk to me, I’m in a mood.” And so you don’t.

 
“Fuck no, not yet. Got to fix this little bastard. Little bastard bounced off on the way over here. Little bastard. Fucking transducer.” That’s Mike, Sean’s brother, as he tries to fix the fish-finder on the stern of his sixteen-foot Lund. “Little bastard” is his favorite phrase and he is free with it; he’ll call everyone—white and Indian alike—a “little bastard” as often as he uses it to refer to fish and motors.

  The wind pushes its way through our clothes. We’re on Indian Point, on the west side of Lake Mille Lacs. It’s getting dark but if I squint I can see the floats attached to other nets bouncing on the waves. No one else is setting, and the only light comes from the headlights of the reservation game warden’s truck, staffed by two non-Indian reservation conservation officers, making sure we obey the letter of the law as spelled out in the agreement between the Mille Lacs Band and the state of Minnesota at the end of a decade-long legal battle. They are also protecting us from non-Indians who, until very recently, gathered at boat landings like this one and heckled Indians, spit on us, and held up signs that read “Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian” and—one of my favorites—“Indians Go Home.”

  The transducer on the fish-finder and depth gauge has broken off and Mike is still trying to rig it up right. His brother Marc, a large man with large strong hands wearing a SpongeBob stocking hat, leans out the door of his Ford F350. The Cummins diesel throbs under the hood. He takes his foot off the brake and the dually tires in the back inch down the ramp toward the lake.