In Long-Sought Change, States Must Consider Tribal Rights

By: Alex Brown

In the 1800s, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa joined other tribes in signing a pair of treaties with the federal government, giving up massive swaths of land in return for the creation of a reservation in eastern Minnesota. The treaties included a guarantee: Tribal members would be able to return in perpetuity to the lands they were signing away to gather wild rice, known as manoomin.

“There’s a recognition that [manoomin] is a relative that figures very prominently in the Ojibwe migration story,” said Nancy Schuldt, water projects coordinator with the environmental program for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “It is one of the hallmarks of the how and the why [that] the Ojibwe people found themselves migrating to the western Great Lakes.”