The Walleye War: The Struggle for Ojibwe Spearfishing and Treaty Rights

6 Spearing in the Four Directions

6 Spearing in the Four Directions 11. Tribal members Tom Maulson and his son put in a boat at a landing among sheriff’s police and protesters. Photo courtesy of Tom Maulson. The 1989 spearing season unfolded accompanied by a complicated interplay between the leaders of two factions on the reservation at Lac du Flambeau, five other bands of Wisconsin Ojibwes who were also spearing, non-Indian citizen treaty protesters and supporters, the governor , state and federal congressional representatives, the American Indian Movement, and a federal district judge. As in previous years, the St. Croix band inaugurated the season, spearing 150 miles west of Lac du Flambeau where the lakes tend to open up earlier than in the north central part of Wisconsin. Within days, seventeen Flambeau spearfishers drove for three hours to the southern limit of the ceded territory in Marathon County and took 604 walleye from the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir, which had never been speared before and had not existed in the nineteenth century when the treaties were signed. Another nine spearers went to Lake Nokomis , an hour south of the reservation, and took 248 fish; five others speared the Willow Reservoir, taking 94 walleye. The first night’s catch was given to the elders on the reservation, according to Tom Maulson, who continued to be sought out by the media and was willing to interpret the significance of spearfishing. His claim was taken up by the media and used by some protesters over the course of the season to negatively shape outsiders’ perceptions of spearing and the escalating conflict. Maulson’s knowledge of how the fish were being used implied that the spearfishing movement had an organizational coherence, contesting the usual media representation of the conflict as between individual, named, and identified nonIndians and a group of unidentified and undifferentiated Indians. The spearers were clearly led by a recognizable leader, albeit in a fashion largely unfamiliar to non-Indians. The practice of giving fish to the elders implied the existence of a coherent community as well as the presence of a distinct, traditional moral order at Flambeau. 130 Spearing in the Four Directions opposition The print media’s coverage of the 1989 season, featuring front-page stories and headlines beginning more than a week before the first spears went into the water, encouraged attendance at the landings. Each issue of the Wausau Daily Herald, for example, displayed a map above the nameplate on the front page with a tally by band and county of the number of spearfishers and total walleye taken at each lake.1 Northern Wisconsin’s counties appeared in two colors on the map; counties with lakes speared that day were labeled and colored yellow, while all others remained unlabeled and shown in green. Recalling the image on the Treaty Beer can and posters, superimposed diagonally across the entire map was a fishing spear with a fish impaled through the belly on the five-tined head—a physical impossibility, since fish don’t swim upside down. Rendering the spearfishing information as a banner above the newspaper’s nameplate effectively represented spearing and the attendant protesting as an athletic event (Schlender 1991:13). Like the daily box scores and weather reports—more the signs of seasons and permanent institutional contexts than events—spearing was now being depicted as a perennial spectacle, a representation that spurred both observers and protesters to flock to the landings. The numbers of protesters at the named lakes in 1989 did increase significantly over the previous year, although little attempt was made to distinguish ‘‘spectators’’ or ‘‘observers’’ from protesters. Building on established homeowners’ associations in the neighborhoods of the lakes, ‘‘lake watch groups’’ instituted by sta/w were able to disseminate information about spearfishing activity with great efficiency. Every night of the eleven-day season, at least 250 people attended at least one landing each night. Other protesters launched boats to make what were euphemistically called ‘‘observation runs,’’ harassing spear- fishers by intentionally creating wakes that made spearing difficult and dangerous. In some cases a dozen protest boats converged on a single spearing boat. Indian spearing boats were swamped or rammed; dnr patrol boats were far outnumbered and had difficulty keeping up with the conflict on water (Whaley and Bresette 1994: 107). Although protesters did not attend the lakes speared by Lac...