The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin

Chapter 7. Maggie Quaderer, Steve Grover, and the Creation of Community at Whitefish, 1894– 1920

179 CHAPTER 7 Maggie Quaderer, Steve Grover, and the Creation of Community at Whitefish, 1894–1920 In 1900, most of Giishkitawag’s community lived at Whitefish on the reservation. While there was still a significant number of holdouts living off the reservation at Bakerville on Long Lake, the majority of the community, including all of Nena’aangabi’s surviving children and grandchildren, lived on the reservation. No one succeeded Giishkitawag as ogimaa. Like almost all Native people at this time, colonialism undercut traditional political institutions. The farmer at Lac Courte Oreilles and the Indian agent at La Pointe effectively directed much of reservation life, down to dispensing money from sales of timber on allotments, a major source of Ojibwe income. There were areas where the Ojibwe did exercise autonomy, such as deciding who was entitled to allotments. In the decades during which Waabizheshi and Giishkitawag resisted removal, these decisions were made by ogimaag at Lac Courte Oreilles and Bakweyawaa , who had formed a relationship with the Indian agents and created a place for themselves in the political life of the reservation. However, by 1900 these leaders (who had signed the treaty of 1854 creating the reservation ), such as Akiwenzii and Ozhaawasho-giizhig, were dead, replaced by a Business Committee comprised primarily of assimilated individuals of mixed descent. However, the descendants of Nena’aangabi found new ways to take a leadership role in reservation life. In 1900, one of Aazhaweyaa’s grandchildren , Maggie Quaderer, was walking to school in Whitefish. In the 180| Chapter Seven middle of her walk, the eight-year-old experienced a vision where she was instructed about how to carry out Chi-dewe’igan, or Big Drum ceremonies. Big Drum was not new to the reservation. It came to Ojibwe communities in the late nineteenth century. However, Quaderer’s vision added new elements to the ceremony and stressed prohibition of alcohol and gambling. Quaderer was also told that the leader of these ceremonies should be her cousin Steve Grover, who was the son of one of Nena’aangabi’s daughters. Grover was forty years old at the time of his younger cousin’s vision and was not involved in Big Drum ceremonies on the reservation. However, in the months prior to the vision, Grover was becoming more interested in the ceremonies. After Maggie Quaderer had her vision, Steve Grover began leading Big Drum ceremonies at Whitefish. These ceremonies began to draw hundreds from Native communities as far away as Oklahoma. Grover’s ceremonies were unique and were controversial among followers of Big Drum elsewhere on the reservation. However, Steve Grover emerged as a different kind of leader, building on the rich legacy of leadership in his family. Scholars have typically characterized the years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as ones of cultural decline for Native peoples due to federal policies of boarding schools and allotment. Many narratives of Native history are driven by policy and do not have Native leaders at their center. Therefore, it seems inconceivable that Native people could sustain their traditions, let alone create new ones, during this time. Beginning in the late 1870s, Ojibwe and other Native communities throughout the Great Lakes integrated Big Drum into their community life. Big Drum required major time and labor commitments among its many followers to adhere to its many complex ceremonial protocols. While there were many drums at Lac Courte Oreilles, Whitefish became a major center for Big Drum after 1900, due in no small part to the charismatic leadership of Steve Grover. With federal, state, and local governments seeking to curb Ojibwe sovereignty, Grover became a regionally prominent leader of a spiritual movement rooted in tradition. The early years of Big Drum at Lac Courte Oreilles reveal the creative and transcendent power of traditional culture for Native peoples during what is commonly characterized as the darkest time for Native culture and traditions. In this context, traditional culture was an avenue both for Steve Grover to assert a leadership role and for Ojibwe people more broadly to resist colonialism and demonstrate their sovereignty. Quaderer, Grover, and Community| 181 OJIBWE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY By 1900, the original ogimaag who signed the treaties had passed on. Nationally the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) sought to curb traditional Native political institutions. At Lac Courte Oreilles, the BIA consulted a Business Committee to make internal decisions about resources on the reservation...