8/15/08: DAGWAAGIN (IT IS FALL)

Saturday, 7:45 AM. 61 degrees, wind NW, light to moderate. The channel is crawling and looks like it may get rough. There are white-gray clouds on the northern horizon and overhead. The barometer predicts rain.
Yesterday’s mail brought my fall issue of Mazina’agin, “a chronicle of the Lake Superior Ojibwe,” published by The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (but, please, it is really too soon for it to actually be fall!) It is a read I look forward to, as it has both modern and traditional Indian wildlife and cultural articles. It is very professional in both content and style. The current issue has a host of articles, from lead in venison to fish carving, Lake levels, marten stocking, loons, the Clam Lake elk herd, invasive species and more.
It is a free publication, except for a $5 postal charge outside the United States and Canada. You can obtain a subscription by calling 715-682-6619, or by writing Mazina’agan, P.O. Box 9, Odanah, WI 54861. It also has excellent art work and many fine posters, etc. are available.
This is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Commission, and of the federal, state and tribal agreements on Indian hunting and fishing within the territories ceded to the U.S. by 19th Century treaties. This reaffirms the Indian's right to harvest fish and game and wild rice on these territories, as the original treaties stipulated. Those rights had never been fully implemented, as there was violent opposition to this by many non-Indians, but it has all worked out pretty well. After all, what difference should it make to anyone else if Indians shoot a deer or spear a fish to feed their families and keep their traditions alive, as long as the resource base and the rights of others are respected, as they currently are?
This matter has been, and should be, a matter of honor on on the side of both the tribes and the states and federal governments, that the original treaties are respected in perpetuity, and that all our people can live together in peace and with the knowledge that justice prevails.