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Chapter Five Contemporary Setting and Conflicts “Start with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun, and the trees will last forever.” —Menominee leader, usually identified as Chief Oshkosh (quoted in Spindler and Spindler 1971, 201) THERE IS CONSIDERABLE tension over Native American hunting and fishing rights in Wisconsin. Letters to sporting magazines commonly urge the boycotting of casinos run by Indian tribes until the tribes give up their right to set their own hunting and fishing regulations. Many majority -culture fishermen believe that Indian fishing practices are a threat to the sportfish populations of Wisconsin. This is seen as having important economic consequences, for in Wisconsin, hunting and fishing for sport are multibillion-dollar enterprises. To get the flavor of some of the more extreme anti-Indian views, one has only to visit the websites of organizations such as Protect Americans’ Rights and Resources (P.A.R.R.), an organization that actively advocates the revocation of Native Americans’ rights to fish, game, and water. Although the conflict is statewide, and often becomes nationwide, we chose to focus on one locale, sacrificing breadth in favor of depth. HOW WE PICKED OUR RESEARCH SITE On hindsight it often seems that an event can be both completely accidental and carefully planned. One day, Douglas Medin was surfing the internet and chanced on a site linked to Menominee Tribal Enterprises, a 44 Contemporary Setting and Conflicts 45 forestry business that, among other things, operates a sawmill on the Menominee reservation in northeastern Wisconsin. The Menominee are renowned for their one-hundred-fifty-year record of sustainable forestry. The tribe also has its own college, the College of the Menominee Nation, which offers training in natural resources and sustainable development.1 Two factors made this accidental discovery significant. One was that two of the authors of this volume were part of a team of researchers who had been studying the relationship between how people think about nature and how they act on it. Specifically we had been doing research with three groups who live in the rain forest of lowland Guatemala and practice agroforestry. The groups differ dramatically in the sustainability of their practices and we had been trying to find out why. The Menominee appeared to represent another positive instance of sustainable resource management. We also wanted to perform studies where we could equate for expertise—in Guatemala the group that had the most sustainable practices was far more expert than the other two. Second, one member of the research team, Medin, was already planning to do research in Wisconsin related to people’s understanding of biology . We had been frustrated by the lack of knowledge of plants and animals among Northwestern University undergraduates. Although many of them know a lot about microbiology, most of them couldn’t tell a maple from an oak. Of course, we could find tree experts by going to places like the Morton Arboretum, the Chicago Botanical Garden, and the Evanston Parks Department. However, we wanted a sample of people who would have considerable knowledge about plants and animals where this knowledge was not based on professional training but rather on activities in their everyday lives. We thought that a small, rural community in Wisconsin might be a good place to find such people. Finally, we aimed to be in an area where there were lakes and rivers because we wanted to interview fishermen. These factors converged in and around the Menominee reservation, which lies about forty miles west of Green Bay, Wisconsin, on both banks of the Wolf River. When you get to Green Bay it makes a big difference whether you head east or west. East takes you to Door County, something of a tourist ’s delight. In addition to the wonderful Lake Michigan shoreline and resorts with all the amenities, there are plenty of excellent restaurants, plenty of opportunities for shopping, plenty of art galleries, and plenty of other tourists. If you head west instead, you’ll come to Shawano County, more of a sportsman’s delight. The patches of forest intermingled with cornfields support a high deer population. There are also lakes, rivers, and streams of all sizes, containing a diverse population of fish species. There are [3.21.100.34] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 13:17 GMT...

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