Interview with Dwight Bucko Teeple by Charlie Otto Rasmussen Bay Mills, Michigan January 30, 2007

Transcription

1 Interview with Dwight Bucko Teeple by Charlie Otto Rasmussen Bay Mills, Michigan January 30, 2007 COR: Tell me a little bit about growing up. Did you grow up around here? DBT: Yes, I did. I grew up here at Bay Mills. Our home was about, about two miles from Bay Mills Resort & Casino where we are at now. Right by the tribal office buildings. It s probably a hundred yards, a hundred fifty yards from there is where the home was. I was not born there but I was born in, just up the beach from where Bay Mills Community College is located, just down near the shore. You can still see the, the foundation area where I was born. Right on the beach. My dad was a fisherman and that was one of the launch points from, for the river system, the St. Mary s River. And we were, him, my mom and kids lived there, and that s where I was born, right on the beach in a log cabin. My Great Grandmother, Ellen Marshall, was the midwife, and she was the one that delivered me and that was 1948, July 8th. And I was born at daybreak and thus she gave me my Indian name at that point and time: Waaban Anung, meaning Morning Star. That s where I was born and raised at Bay Mills until I entered the military service. Then moved to Sault Ste. Marie after I come back from the military. COR: When you were young was your dad a commercial fisherman? DBT: Yes he was. My dad was a tribal commercial fisherman. He fished for himself quite a number of years, but he also fished for other folks. One of the most notable fisheries that he worked for was the Brown Fishery out of Whitefish Point. It was a large fishery, and they fished quite a number of nets. He also fished for Bob Milligan, Milligan Fisheries, out of Brimley, Michigan, one of the non-native commercial fishers in the area. So he worked for commercial fishing all of his life. He was also a hunter and a trapper as well when the commercial fishing wasn t going in the fall and the spring. Whenever the breaks were in the winter, he d be out trapping beaver and otter and whatever else. COR: What s his name? DBT: He was known as Boss Man or Frank Teeple Jr. His dad was Frank Teeple Sr. and he was a fisherman as well. His dad was George Teeple. George Teeple was a fisherman as well. And George s dad was Simon Teeple. He was one of the first non-natives in the area. He was the first light keeper at Iroquois Point Lighthouse from 1857 to Simon was light keeper there, and he married an Indian lady, the daughter of Chief Makwabwaam. So that s how the Teeple name came to be at Bay Mills. COR: Did you fish with your dad? 1

2 DBT: As a young kid I d go out with him often, you know, many different times, not only him but my grandfathers as well. In the wintertime we were fishing through the ice. Go out there and pull the nets out. You lifted one net at a time through the ice. You d have to tie on a running line and pull the net out then someone would have to take the running line- -as a kid I was always a little useless, of course. They d pull the running lines and have to pull the nets back in. I remember skidding across the ice and falling down. It was really, to me at that time you know being a little kid or a young guy, it was really hard work trying to pull them nets back underneath the water even though it s like probably only a 150-foot net. But I remember that being, you know, real hard to do. Sometimes there d be a couple of us kids pulling on those running lines and trying to get the nets pulled back underneath the water. And we used to go out there, out with my grandfather Floyd Teeple who used to fish for Howard Brosman. We would get up just at, before daybreak and go to the, Howard s barn and get the horse ready, get him fed with oats and throw a blanket over him. Get him harnessed and everything and harness him to the sled and then get in go out into the St. Mary s River and lift or set nets. That was, that was the real old days there. COR: So what would I see? Would I see a horse with a sled and would you guys be in the sled too with your gear? DBT: Oh yeah. COR: And then you would just go out by horse and sled to your fishing spot? DBT: Yeah. The sled probably had six-inch runners on it about that wide [gestures] on each side so you ve got to put runners and, probably about this high, [gestures] like a trailer with wheels nowadays you know. COR: Three or four feet? DBT: Yeah. And then across it would be fish boxes with either nets or boxes of fish as we brought them back in. Primarily we were fishing at this point in time, fishing lake herring. But that was, you know, those are just memories of being out there as a kid. Eventually after the horse, I remember going out with you know my grandpa or my dad using old Model As, rather than the horse so, you know we d be traveling out there on the ice there with one of them old Model As or Model Ts out on the ice, sometimes dragging, dragging a sled behind it. COR: Were fish generally taken back and dressed and then boxed up again? Or would it all depend on where they go, who the buyer is? DBT: Well, in the winter time up here we had a buyer, his name was Gerhardt Fisheries located just down the road from where Big Abe s bar used to be and just about a mile west 2

3 of the Iroquois Point Lighthouse, and Clifford Gerhardt was the guy who owned it, and he would buy all the local fish. I remember bringing in lake herring or lake whitefish, trout, and he would buy it up from all the local fishermen. And then he would take care of, you know getting it scaled, ready for market. He was, I believe, a Jewish fella and he s still you know still around. He has a book out and he runs North Star Christmas tree farm down by Wolverine, Michigan-Vanderbilt area. But in those early days he did the, purchase the fish here and purchased it off from all the little fishermen. So they go out and lift their nets through the ice, then when they d come in, they just drop it off at his place, get a slip for how many pounds they had or just get it weighed up in the round, and they d get a slip for the amount, how much they had. At the end of the week, when he made his sale, he d make out a check to all the guys for their fish for that week. They wouldn t get paid just right as soon as they come in. Maybe that was a good thing because a lot of the time a lot of times the guys would drink it up. COR: Were traditional teachings part of those early days growing up? DBT: We didn t really think of them as you know traditional teachings but if I sit here now and look back on some of those things, yeah absolutely. It s just that we never, never realized that that s what it was. You know talking about some of the old stories, some of the things that Indians used to do to get fish, you know. It just never, never occurred to us that those were traditional teachings, such as spearing fish through the ice or making little decoys, little fish decoys to jig and have under the ice to spear the fish. Never, you know, at that time, it never occurred to us that it was traditional teachings but looking back at it now, yeah, it was. COR: So you go off as a young man, finish school and go into the service--which branch did you go into? DBT: I was, went into the US Army. Went in on September of 1969, probably getting close to the height of the Vietnam War, just about. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was probably one of the major battles in the Vietnam War. But went in 69. I volunteered to go, volunteered my draft, wasn t drafted or anything. And I spent a couple of years in the service. Never did get sent to Vietnam. I was you know asking to go a couple of times. I had a couple of other brothers that were in the service at the time. Raymond, he was over in Vietnam in the Parrot s Beak region near the Cambodian border with the 199 th Light Infantry. Another brother that was in the 82 nd Airborne Division, and he was over, got assigned over to the DMZ in Korea. So, I had two brothers in war zones. They never did send me to any of them. I was with the 82 nd Airborne Division and 3 rd Brigade. Back in those days we jokingly called ourselves Nixon s Police Force, because we were sent to all the major things that were going on around the country. In 1968, 82 nd was sent up right after coming back from Vietnam, they were sent up to Detroit during the riots there and Kent State happened, and a number of other things, Bobby Seale trial, the May Day demonstrations in Washington DC. We were all on standby out in the, we had a big tent city out in Washington DC out at the airport there, military airport in case we were needed 3

4 for the May Day demonstrations. In case there were any riots or anything. We were there as part of Nixon s Police Force. As a matter of fact, there are some old photos of, newspapers that shows helicopters landing on the Washington Mall by the big Washington Monument, that one big tall obelisk. COR: Right. DBT: Showing the helicopters coming in with the troops to help out with the riots or keep peace. So, I was with some of those folks that were part of Nixon s Police Force there. COR: Did that experience impact you when you left the service, and you came back to the area? DBT: I think it did, yeah. COR: Now this must have been about the time that Jondreau and DBT: Yep, Yeah, I come back in 1971, got out of service on September 11, 1971 I believe it was. And it was that same year, just a couple of weeks after I got out of the service that I believe Big Abe [LeBlanc] was arrested on September 27, So, I was here for that. The Jondreau Decision had just come down. The state of Michigan didn t know whether to scratch their heads or mind their butts, you know, about fishing. But, we, when the Jondreau Decision come down and Big Abe was arrested and that case was going through, everything was wide open. It was the wild frontier again. Just getting out of the military, not only myself but there were several others in the community that were just getting out of the military. We were having fun you know. Where else can you go and carry guns around? And basically have a guerilla war with the Department of Natural Resources, because they didn t know what to do either until the courts started putting injunctions on this, that or the other thing. It was, you know, the Wild West and the wild frontier. Some of the guys in the community here--i ll just put it this way, we heard stories. And like the DNR would try to, you know arrest some of the guys or see what was going on at the beaches and they d park their car at places like Pendills Creek National Fish Hatchery, and somehow or another, their tires all managed to get flattened while they were on the beaches. COR: These are tribal fishermen? DBT: No, no. The DNR. COR: All right. DBT: So, while they re out on the beaches, all the fishermen, or some of the fishermen were out doing some carvings on tires and the tires would get all slashed. They d come back with, to their cars; they d be all flat-tired. COR: Was this in response to tickets, confiscations, those sorts of things? 4

5 DBT: Yes, it was. Back in those days fishing was a bit different than what you have today, and one of the methods of fishing that we used was, we d walk the nets out. Still, it wasn t totally legal, the DNR was still arresting us, but what we d do is we d have one or two nets and a--a couple different places on the beach. So we d walk out one or two nets depending on how deep the water is, so you can walk them out about chest high and tie it off on the beach. So you find a stump, tie a rope to it rather than to an anchor, lead it out till you got deep enough water, two, three, you know maybe a foot, a foot and a half or so of water, start letting the net out and you run it out for another hundred feet until you know, until you re about waist deep or chest deep in water. Then you d have an anchor on that end. Each end would be tied to a stump or driftwood. The other end, they d have maybe a, the things we used to use is maybe an old rim, old starter. You didn t need much to hold a net in place. You wouldn t need no buoys or anything. And what the DNR would do is they d walk the beach. They d look for the string coming off of, you know, a stump or a log, and then they d pull the net in and take it. Naturally, we didn t like them doing that so, some folks would go and flatten the tires up the road for doing it. They want to get something of ours; we ll get something of theirs. You know, I guess that was the attitude. And being, you know, like myself and others, like Andrew LeBlanc, just fresh back from Vietnam, out of the military, we were game for getting in those kinds of situations. COR: As we sit here, where, where do remember setting nets? Where were these kinds of things happening? DBT: Initially, it was only in the Whitefish Bay area here. Up the beach here maybe ten, twelve miles there s a place called the Narrows, Pendills Bay, Pendills Creek area. Just a mile east of that would be the Bayou area. Just walk nets out from there. And I worked for the hatchery system. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and I worked at Pendills Creek Fish Hatchery in And one of the things that we did back there was, you know, I was just a student working a summer program, but one of the things we did was I got an opportunity to travel around with the guys in fisheries there and visit all the fish hatcheries in Michigan--the state fish hatchery in Marquette, the one down in Oden, Michigan, the other national fish hatcheries in Sullivan Creek, down in East Jordan National Fish Hatchery. So being able to do that I was also a part of the crew that went out and helped release year-old fingerlings, and what we d do is take those lake trout and release them, oftentimes from the back of a big old tanker truck. We just put a hose down and push them in the water and let it drain, let the water drain out, and the fish would go in the water at an access site or sometimes it would be off a break-wall. Examples of those would be like the access site break-wall area at Whitefish Point; at the Narrows in Whitefish Bay there was a boat launch site area there. You just back a truck down there and release the fish; Grand Marias; up in Marquette, Whitefish Point where they had an access site and then other places around the state. And I accompanied those trucks and helped plant those fish during that one summer, so when the fishing wars started up, I knew some of those areas, and we fished like I was saying one or two nets off the shore, and 5

6 those weren t big mesh. We weren t fishing four-and-a-half or six-and-a-half mesh to catch lake trout or fish at that time. We were primarily targeting lake trout, and we were fishing with small mesh, two-and-a-half, maybe three-and-a-half inch mesh, and those were extremely effective in catching lake trout. Lake trout come through, and they breath and their mouths are full of little sharp teeth and when they hit the netting, what they re breathing, running the water through, they take in some of the mesh, all that small mesh that gets, get caught by them little teeth rather than the gills. So, and being we were setting the nets just after dark, we would go out every hour or so, you know, have one gang here and one there of one or two nets. We d go out, collect all the fish, and we d collect them, pull them out of the nets as, while it was in the water. And we d carry a gunnysack. We d throw the lake trout inside the gunnysack. Then we d come back in, walk up the beach to the next net, do the same thing. Then we d take them and dump the fish in the back of truck and take off back down there with the gunnysacks for another load. We did that all night, until it started breaking day, and then we pulled the nets in. And that was the way we did fishing in the early days, the early days of fishing rights, and the DNR would be trying to catch us all while we were out doing those kind of things. Sometimes they d catch us, sometimes they d just get, well they actually never got us, but they d get our equipment. COR: Did you have a fish buyer? Or would those fish go just into the community? DBT: No, we would take them to different places. As I said earlier, you know, the local area. Sometimes we would just go around and peddle the fish if there wasn t too many. Sometimes you d only get 15, 20 pounds or so--that s only two, three or four fish we d peddle, you know? But if we got more than that then we d, we d make a run to places like Bell s Fishery or up in Marquette, Thill Fisheries, and sell them there. Those guys were buying them. They didn t have any problem with that. COR: Did you guys, did you guys generally have a gun with you, and was that for protection or intimidation or both? DBT: In those early days, yes we did. And it was for protecting you. Not only the DNR out there, although they were, you know, some of the group[s] that w[ere] out there, there w[ere] non-indian[s] that were patrolling the beaches, sort of like vigilante groups, sport fishers. In those days if you checked some of the, the newspapers from the area such as the Evening News or the Traverse City Record-Eagle from 72 on to 77-78, in that fiveyear period there were armed vigilante groups on the beaches, and they were walking the beaches doing the same thing the DNR was doing looking for those nets that were run out on the beach. And they d either cut them free, or they d take some of their trucks, if they rode the beach on a truck, and just hook it up to the back hitch and just yank them right out of the lake leave them laying there on the beaches. Or they d cut them free, and it d float around out there, and it d continue to catch fish. Sometimes they would, you know, find some of our guys, particularly the older guys that couldn t, couldn t run or hide as well you know, do things, and we have some, some sad 6

7 stories. One of the older guys was a guy named Anthony, and he had a wooden leg. He was caught on the beach by the vigilantes at one time the guys that were doing the vigilante stuff on the beaches, but they gave him, gave him a good roughing up. Tore off his leg and threw it out into the water. Those are, those are the kind of things those guys did you know? They even went so far as to take photos of some of our guys that were out fishing in the small boats; when they didn t walk them out [nets], they d take them out in small boats just off shore. They d take photographs of those guys, and they made up wanted posters, pictures of Bay Mills guys and have them posted at different launch sites saying Wanted Dead or Alive. COR: Yeah, Wild West is right. DBT: Yeah. So, you know, sometimes they d shoot the boats, put holes in them that way. Or they chop them up with an axe and all kinds, all kinds of stuff. COR: Were these, were these vigilante groups, were [they] organized to the degree where they called themselves a name? You know Wisconsin had a couple of notable ones like PARR and STA, these acronym-type names. Did they organize over here to that degree? DBT: I think locally they were. But I would classify them more like locals cells. Folks with similar ideas, you know? Probably much like us. They were probably younger guys that were fresh out of the military just looking for excitement, you know, running along the beaches. They had a mission, you know, that they were going to stop these Indians from fishing. Particularly with the newspaper running all the they were running the stories from the state of Michigan s attorney general, you know Frank Kelly at that point in time. Rather than saying that things could be solved, and things could be done peacefully, he would come out with stories like: I m not going to be a bit surprised if, you know, some of those Indians get killed. You know these kinds of things, you can, you can read it in the papers from that period. Rather than try to diffuse the situation, he used language to inflame the situation actually, or exacerbate the, or exacerbate, you know, the guys that are out there thinking they re on a mission. Gives them a good reason, coming from a notable source though, you know? We ve got some authority here to go out and take care of this Indian problem. COR: Did the Sault Tribe have young tribal members out there exercising, and did they have similar experiences with groups or people trying to stop them? DBT: In the later years, yeah. But in the initial years of fishing--big Abe was arrested in , 73, 74, those were the, the years that the lakes were opened up. There had to be a vanguard of young guys to do that. Somebody had to be the first one at Grand Marais, somebody had to be the first one at Marquette or Shot Point, someone had to be the first one down in, you know, St. Ignace, Harbor Springs, Petoskey, Elk Rapids, Ludington, Grand Marais, I mean Grand Haven, then on the east side of lake over toward Cheboygan, Hammond Bay, Alpena. In those early days, , the primary fishing area was Pendills Bay, St. Mary s River, Whitefish Point, the North Beach. It gradually moved on to various other spots further west and in start opening up the fishery over in Grand 7

8 Marais. Somebody had to be the first ones in there and I was with, fishing with Art LeBlanc and Andrew LeBlanc, and we went into Grand Marais to start fishing. This is and in 1974 while fishing in Grand Marais we fished off of the break wall. Remember I told you that somebody knew where the lake trout were being planted? I was the guy that knew some of those spots. So we went up there and set some nets off the break wall. We d take a 16-foot boat and go out and set a couple of nets out there and just after dark, come back just before day break and get those nets out of there and get on home or take the fish for sale somewhere. Well this one morning while the guys were out there fishing, they got shot at, shotgun pellets spraying up around just, just before the beach, between the beach and the boat. I think that was more of a warning than actually trying to hit somebody or whatever. I didn t really know, I was pulling beach duty at that time so I was walking around with a big old trench coat, walking around the break walls. COR: And what was your role? DBT: I carried a rifle. So I was watching the beach--to see if anybody had done any shooting like that. So I was, you know, had a big old trench coat and underneath the trench coat I had a 30/30, and they got shot at and so I seen the area where the shot had come from. There s only one road leading down in there. I went and jumped in the truck and tried to drive down that way to see what was going on and who it was doing the shooting, you know, if they were hunting ducks or whatever. Anyway, went down there and a truck come speeding out of there. I turned around and followed it for a little ways and got a license number. At that point in our fishing, I had a friend, his name was Jerry, and Jerry Zilkowski was a Michigan State Police officer, and he was President of the Michigan State Police Association. So I give him the license number and told him what, you know, give him a heads up of what happened there and was later told--i don t know if it was true or not, the license number did trace back--but it was traced to the local sheriff. So, that s one incident in Grand Marais. Another incident in Grand Marais is the guys went out, but we all went out. Someone was pulling beach duty and as they re coming in, getting close to shore, you could see there were like 200 sport fishermen all gathered around, ready to give a hard time at the landing, and we were landing the east side of Grand Marais; fairly remote area. So, well, we re not going in there to land, so they hollered at, hollered at either myself, I don t know if I was driving or not on that one, or Andrew. Anyway, told them to meet us right downtown. So all, everybody moved right, right downtown Grand Marias. So we come in right in plain sight, right in downtown Grand Marais. Pull the truck up there by the beach and loaded the boat. While we re doing that, we took all fish boxes and nets out of the boat. We had the rifles, put them down alongside the fish boxes, you know? We had this large group, about 200 sport fishers, and a smaller group come up and started giving us a hard time, asking us questions, poking at things, and doing things and eventually one of those guys picked up one of those rifles a 30/30. He racked the lever on it and he says: this thing s loaded! 8

9 He was standing there with this 30/30 rifle, that was Andrew s rifle, so I didn t know what to do at that point in time, and Andrew, you know, here s a guy that just finished up his second term in Vietnam. [Andrew] reaches in the truck and grabs my rifle, which is also a 30/30 lever action, and he pulls it out and racks the thing and he says: And this one s loaded, too! So here s these two guys looking at each other at about 20 paces apart, and everyone else is focused on both of them. One of the guys, one guy come up and was going to give Andrew a what-for, but he stopped when the barrel was pushed right up into his guts; he doubled over with that barrel stuck up in his gut, and he got out of the way after that. The other guy was still focused on Andrew. While all that was still going on I decided, you know, well, the gun that Andrew has is not loaded because it s mine. I knew it wasn t loaded. This other guy had a loaded rifle. So I says well, I think I can make it over to him and grab the rifle. So I did. And I did a quick sprint over and grabbed, grabbed that rifle while he his attention was focused on Andrew with the other rifle and ripped it out of his hands, and knocked him to the ground, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder or something [laughs]. This is, you know, the gun went off his shoulder and we asked everybody to clear the area, which they did after that. And we were able to finish loading up our nets and boat and get out of there ourselves. Those are just two stories from the Grand Marias area when we were opening up the fisheries back in 1970, 74 I believe that was. Grand Marais was one of the areas that we went into and one other at Bay Mills, and other folks seen us fishing there, then they started joining in and they started fishing there. As soon as we seen some folks coming in, and it seemed like it was getting crowded for fishing, we moved onto another spot like Marquette or Munising or all different, different areas. I think we went onto Munising after, you know, we hit different spots different nights. One night might be at Whitefish Point, next night at Grand Marais, next night might be back at Whitefish Point, next night over in Grand Island, Munising, next night maybe to Marquette. We traveled, started traveling like that all over the place--about a 16-footer out of the back of the truck. Sometimes we d just put up a tarp and sleep on the beaches. That was the way fishing was done in those days. COR: Did you have the support of the tribe and the tribal community? DBT: The popular support was there. I can t say that the political support was always there, but the popular support was there all the time. We believed we had the right. The community was in no shape to bail us out of jail, so we had to make sure we stayed out of jail. They were in no position to have attorneys represent us for, you know, if our equipment got confiscated so we had to handle all that end ourselves and risk losing all of our equipment if we didn t take the proper precautions. But in terms of the community, Bay Mills, we were a fishing community. There were no casinos in that point of our history. Ninety-nine percent of our living was made that way. So yeah, I would say that we had full support of the community. COR: Were you following events, some of these mirror events in the Northwest with some of those tribes that s occurring at this time with those fish wars? 9

10 DBT: Yeah, we were well aware of those, yeah. And we were saying Well, they re having those fish ins, we re not having fish-ins but were having just as much, just as much fun. [laughs] That was just the way we looked at it. It wasn t, you know, wasn t that we were endangering our lives or anything--even though we were! We didn t look at it that way. We looked at it, you know, this is a whole lot of fun. We re going to continue to do this, and we have the right to do this, and nobody s going to stop us. And we didn t, the fishing thing was like an open challenge to the sport groups or, you know, that s the way we looked at it--as an open challenge. So we didn t really have any kind of fish-ins. We did our things in a, just after dark or before daybreak and, you know, try to make our living without raising too much concern out in the community, the non-indian community. There s enough of that there already with the vigilantes on the beaches, the DNR trying to confiscate the equipment. COR: And then so over this period the idea for COTFMA [Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority] comes together. Does this happen in the late 70s when you re looking to regulate it? Self regulate it? DBT: I m not sure exactly when they come together. But I think it was in response to some of the court decisions in the mid-70s: that we had the right to fish, although it wasn t an unlimited right. And [if] we were endangering the fish stocks, then we had to, we had to be able to stop our fishermen from fishing. I m not really sure what those dates were, but I do remember them. As far as COTFMA, I don t recall exactly when that started, but I would, I would guess it was probably in the mid to late 80s, ahh 70s. I don t recall them being there real early. COR: Was there anything in place before that 85 Consent Decree? Were there interim DBT: Yeah, there were regulations and stuff, but it was formalized in 1985 with the Consent Decree. They call it the Consent Decree. We at Bay Mills didn t call it the Consent Decree. We called it the Consent Order, you know? They call it the Consent Decree, but it was an order to us. We wanted to oppose it, not everybody at Bay Mills, but a large number of fishermen or most of the fishermen. COR: So there s mixed feelings. This didn t look like that good of a deal? DBT: Yeah, it was, Wade Teeple was the chairman when the negotiations initially started and towards to the middle to the late stages of the negotiations Wade resigned as chairman. The chairman then become Irma Parrish and conservation committee chairman at point in that time was Arnie Parrish. Arnie and Irma were the ones that were part of the negotiation where the special master come in and try to negotiate an agreement between Bay Mills, Sault Ste Marie Tribe and Grand Traverse, State of Michigan, Justice Department, Department of the Interior. So everybody was at Lake Superior State University trying to negotiate this agreement. And they spent three or four days there continuing negotiating and coming to a resolution on the various areas of the, what would become the Consent Decree of Her and conservation committee chair, who was Arnie Parrish, they signed 10

11 the agreement and didn t bring it back to the community for approval before signing. The community rejected the agreement, even though it was signed by them. COR: Was it in general, or was there a referendum? DBT: Well it was a general rejection of that agreement. Giveaway, giveaway too much water--basically the lower half of Lake Michigan. We didn t feel we needed to give up the lower half of Lake Michigan. A lot of northern Lake Huron--we didn t feel we needed to give up a lot of northern Lake Huron to refuges and no fishing zones. And a lot of Lake Superior really. So a lot of the fishermen thought way too much was given away in that agreement and they rejected it. As a result, the tribal chairperson at that time was not impeached, or recalled, however there was a resolution passed by the General Tribal Council and the community that she was not to receive pay or any travel dollars for the position of being chairperson. And that resolution passed overwhelmingly which effectively COR: sent a message? DBT: She couldn t do anything in terms of representing the fishing rights or--she could ve done it on her own, but as chairman of the Bay Mills Indian Community she couldn t do it. So that was taken to a court and then general tribal council appointed a group of folks to go down to the court, work with our attorneys to, to try and fight the Consent Decree, which we were unsuccessful at doing. I was part of the group that was appointed by the General Tribal Council. Myself, Kathy Kinney, Jay Tadgerson, I m not sure, there s a couple others. Anyway, we were all appointed to go down and make decisions on behalf of the community and try to fight the 1985 Consent Decree. COR: When was that? DBT: It was So we went down and the judge, Judge Enslin, heard all of the, you know, we got a new judge appointed, his name was Enslin, heard all of the objections that Bay Mills had. I was recommending that we fight it on the basis of it being our culture and that we maintain and keep those waters for small boat operations for the fishers. The push was to make it you know some zones just trap net fishing you know. But we were fighting it on the basis of a small boat fishery, particularly, the hot zone then was Hammond Bay and we were trying to make Hammond Bay just a small boat fishery only. And the state, the other tribes were pushing to make that a trap net zone area. [side one/tape ends] DBT: attorneys listened to us and we were one of the, they were going to fight the zoning on the basis of culture and tradition and they fought it on the basis of small boat versus big boat operations and the judge sided with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe who was Joseph K. Lumsden who testified they were happy with the Consent Decree. Buddy Raphael, who was Grand Traverse Band Chairman, testified and said that the Grand Traverse Band was happy with the Consent Decree. We were the only ones that didn t agree with it. The Feds, 11

12 through the Justice Department said they were happy, the Department of Interior, State of Michigan, everybody was happy with it except Bay Mills. So the judge says, basically: majority rules and Bay Mills you re going to follow that Consent Decree. COR: Who was Bay Mills attorney at that time? DBT: Initially they had an attorney through the, it wasn t Michigan Indian Legal Services, but NARF was one of the attorneys and the attorney that was, we had at that point in time for that hearing was Scott McElroy. I think it s Scott McElroy. His last name was McElroy anyway. It s Bruce Greene and McElroy was, I can t remember his first name. But I think I can find it if I look around hard enough. But he was a younger attorney from NARF, Native American Rights Fund. Bruce Greene was the lead attorney on behalf of the rest of tribes at that point in time. The biologist that testified was Bill Eger for the remainder of the tribes and for Bay Mills we had Mark Ebener. Mark came over from Wisconsin and he was working over at GLIFWC at that point in time, that was 1985, he come over and was the biologist testifying on behalf of Bay Mills. So as a result of 1985 Consent Decree, that was the formal formation of the Chippewa Ottawa Treaty Fishery Management Authority, COTFMA. COR: And then when did you start working for that organization? DBT: I began working for COTFMA in 1998 and worked for them for probably three, four years. Worked there as a resource developer, working on access sites, access site development, writing for different grants--a little bit of everything there I guess. COR: Is COFTMA, now CORA [Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority], is that the agency the tribes want, the organization--is it the right size for how the tribes want to administer the treaty right? DBT: Yeah, it s basically incorporated in the 2000 Consent Decree. In 1998, all the parties to the 1985 Consent Decree got together, State of Michigan, the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, special master, Bay Mills, Sault Tribe, Grand Traverse, and then two new---in 1995 there were two more tribes in the 1836 Treaty area that were recognized, and those being the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians and the Little River Band of Ottawa. Those were the newer tribes that were recognized in 1995 so when the 2000 Consent Decree come, they were part of the negotiations from 98 until the Consent Decree in The Consent Decree was signed here at Bay Mills at Wild Bluff on the hill by all five tribes: Bay Mills, Grand Traverse, Little Traverse, Little River and Sault Ste. Marie. As a result of that, incorporated within that Consent Decree was the formation of--basically dissolving COFTMA--and the formation of CORA. CORA is the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority and they are the regulatory organization for the Consent Decree and the tribes. Basically a formation of the court, or a sanctioned organization of the court. Technically, I think the organization is formed by the five federally recognized tribes and chartered by those tribes. 12

13 COR: Have you followed the 1836 negotiations [leading to the 2007 Consent Decree]? Are you involved in those at all? DBT: The inland hunting and no I haven t been involved directly with that but I try to keep up on what was going on and how things are happening there through the agreement in principal and now working out the finer details of that agreement in principal, being able you know to hunt, trap and gather in the 1836 Treaty area. COR: Based on what you ve seen is it a good deal for the tribes? Is it a good agreement? DBT: Some areas are. There were some areas that I would, that I still think we could ve done better. In the future I think we can do better. The main thing that I think that that agreement in principal gives us is the recognition by the State of Michigan that we do have those rights. Prior to this point in time, the State of Michigan did not recognize those rights but that is you know as far as that agreement goes, that is the primary thing that I think makes that agreement workable at the present time. I think the other things can be worked out in the future. One of the things that I d like to see worked out in the future is the harvesting of game for ceremonial purposes. Same way with the fisheries. Part of the 2000 Consent Decree does not address the issue of being able to harvest fish for ceremonial purposes and you know I thought there should be a mechanism within that 2000 Consent Decree that allowed for that without having to go through the subsistence license and then recording and reporting every fish or every pound of fish that you caught for that, in that manner. Just like, just like the State of Michigan has all of its fishers out here fishing and they do a creel census at the end, of the fishermen and then they make an estimate of how much fish is brought in and caught by its sportfishers. Well the same thing could be done for the fishers that are catching that fish for ceremonial purposes rather than requiring them to be detailed you know in my estimation reports that are not necessary. The impact there is even if we had ceremonies every day would not, wouldn t be enough to make an impact on the fishery. I think it s just a nuisance. COR: Do you think the inland agreement will increase participation--tribal participation in treaty harvesting? DBT: No I don t believe it will increase it. We ve always done it, maybe some of those timid folks out there may finally start to finally go collect some birch bark or collect plants or harvest game that you know before they wouldn t have harvested. But those who have believed in the right, they ve managed to go out there and collect the game anyway whether it was going out using a spotlight at night, getting deer whenever they needed it, whether it was for ceremonial or subsistence, they did those things regardless of that agreement being in place. The timid folks you know might finally go out there and say, well I finally have the right to do it now and I guess I can go out there and do it. Those of us that thought we had the right, we did it you know even though we didn t do it blatantly. 13

14 COR: Do you get the sense that the attitudes toward tribes here in Michigan are different than say Wisconsin or Minnesota where they also have treaty harvesting? To me it s really quiet, I hear very little. DBT: I don t think the attitude is any different anywhere, really. In the early days we used to have--you know before casinos--we used to have blatant racism going on. Some of our people would go into a store and get in line you know--it was a subtle thing--but you know but they would be the last ones to be waited on. And in Bay Mills here, for example, racism was fairly open for some of the local business folks with you know, say different things about when we re out fishing--there goes those bush niggers doing their thing or a lot of you know things like that. Derogatory and racist type attitudes. When casinos come to be- -after 1983, 84, 85--as the casinos were offering them some kind of a service out here, then I think that went below the surface and those very same people would be in those casinos. And they wouldn t be saying the things they just said a few years before other than when they d get kicked out--one local businessman got kicked out of King s Club Casino at one time and as he was going out the door he s hollering out you know the difference between the --I ll use his words-- the niggers in Detroit and the Indians? And he s hollering, it s the Mackinaw Bridge, that s the difference! So you know as long as he was able to come in and gamble, be rowdy, he was okay. But once he got kicked out, then you know it come back up real quick. And I think that s typical of the way things are around Sault Ste. Marie area in general and a lot of our other communities. In 1973 we had a pow wow here in Sault Ste. Marie after quite a number of years but it was the first pow wow for a long time, this was right after the Wounded Knee incident. We had a road block here in 73 over fishing. Well it wasn t actually over fishing but fishing was a big part of it you know. We were fighting with the DNR and we were going out doing different things and the sheriff come in one day and brought a woman who had a child by one of our members. The sheriff brought that woman from Wisconsin, she come down and said she had papers to take the child back so the sheriff come out on the Community with her and served the papers. They took the child, before the father got home I believe, and the sheriff impeded anyone from getting you know as the lady took the child and headed on back to Wisconsin. As a result of that, we shut down the reservation. We didn t want sheriffs, state police, nobody coming into the Community and we had an armed roadblock on both ends of the Bay Mills Indian Community. This is 1973, right after Wounded Knee, so folks that were in office were working hard to try to defuse the situation as a result of that I believe that the Feds cut, loosened up the purse strings for $5 million dollars to form that tribal court for fisheries, as well as the tribal court for other things and also provided monies for the officers to be hired at Bay Mills. Before that, we never had any. So along with the roadblock, right after that, we had a pow wow in Sault Ste. Marie and because of Wounded Knee and what happened at Bay Mills, the folks at Sault Ste. Marie were real concerned about what was going to happen when they get all these Indians coming to town. So they organized a rodeo for the same weekend as the pow wow and the local rednecks organized an annual convention of the John Birch Society the same weekend [chuckles]. COR: What is that? 14

15 DBT: John Birch Society--extremely conservative, actually probably a forerunner to PARR, and of those others. Anyway, while we re having the pow wow that weekend you know we had a lot of Indian people in town. Notables, Indian people--we had Floyd Westerman doing a concert, we had Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt in town, Eddie Benton--just a whole lot of folks in town here. And we had a parade that we participated in, walked the buffalo up the main street of Ashmun, then--it was a real sight to see, Indian guys you know young Indians guys leading this young buffalo calf up the street following these cowboys on horseback. And then running along the streets--you know because they had the rodeo and pow wow going at the same time, that s why those were together on that parade up Ashmun Street--then we had all these John Birchers running around stuffing papers on everybody s windshield about AIM [chuckles], flyers about you know just bad-mouthing Indians. That was 1973 in Sault Ste. Marie. Blatant. Real, real racist town and it still is. It s still there I d say, just under the surface. And I don t think that s any different than any other, any community around Indian communities. COR: The one thing I notice is what I see in the press in Minnesota, you still see these letters to the editor, you still have like last summer they had Mille Lacs veterans go through a parade and they were heckled. You seem to see that in Minnesota. Wisconsin you still get some letters to the editor about people unhappy with tribal fishing. Just in the stuff I ve been able to read in Michigan it s been, it seems hard to find anything in the press and letter writers seem to be quiet. That s why I wondered what was behind that, and I think you answered that. DBT: Yeah, it s there. They just keep it under the surface because quite frankly for a lot of those business folks, we make a lot of money for them and as long as we re making a lot of money for them, they keep it below the surface. But once we cut them off such the one guy, the one businessman in the casino for being too rowdy or something, we cut them off you know from their source of funds or them having a good time, it doesn t take very long for it all to come back. COR: I think I ve covered the primary things I wanted to talk to you about. You ve given me a lot of good information. Is there anything else you want to add? DBT: Right now, one of the things that we ve been involved with--i ve been involved with--i sit on the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society Board of Directors. I m the treasurer there, have been for a while and we try to work with the tribes in terms of research and development of the lakes. One of things that we have is the Phantom S-4, it s a ROV- -remote operated vehicle--it has the capability of doing dives down to 1,500 feet for number of different things. One for research, two would be body recovery--those are a couple of areas the Phantom S-4 is used for. It was used in the recovery of the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. The family of the crew members on the Fitzgerald--there s 29 crew members who lost their lives--the family was 15

16 wanting a permanent memorial for those family members that lost their lives and they wanted the bell recovered so there was a meeting in Sault Ste. Marie back in I attended that meeting and the family were talking about what they wanted to do and wanting to recover the bell from the Fitzgerald and then have the site declared as a gravesite. And they asked if I would help and I agreed to do that and the reason I did it was that divers diving on that site were basically what I consider desecrating a site just like our Indian burial grounds all over the country are being desecrated by folks that dig them up for whatever. So I agreed to assist them and help to acquire [a] $200,000 loan from-- with the help of the tribes for the Shipwreck Society to underwrite this dive. I went down in one of the submarines, the mini submarines that were part of the US, or the Canadian Navy, and spent about six hours in and around the wreck of the Fitzgerald And at the bottom there, at the Fitzgerald site, I had taken, are ah, the pipe that I carry and loaded that pipe down there. And I had an eagle bone whistle and blew that whistle at 535 feet below the water. That whistle was first blown in 1975 when the ship went down because we had four individuals that were lost out there, or six individuals that were lost out in the Tahquamenon Bay area or Whitefish Bay and we didn t know if they were dead or alive as well when that ship went down. So eventually we found out that they were all able to make it to the little small island on Tahquamenon Bay called Tahquamenon Island and were able to ah--some people call it Pomeroy s Island--but these, they were able to survive by being on that island overnight and being rescued off of there. This ship, that Fitzgerald, we were able to recover that bell and make a permanent memorial site at Whitefish Point. Also we going to do the same thing for native fishers and all mariners in the Lakes that have lost their lives is to make a fisheries memorial at Whitefish Point. And that s the reason I sit on that board now is to you know try to further and push that along as well as you know upgrade and maintain different harbors there. The Phantom S-4 is used for many different things and one of those being body recovery. I was able to have Bay Mills assist in the purchase of that Phantom S-4 and if we ever did or ever will need the assistance from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society to recover the remains of someone who has passed away, without risking the lives of any tribal divers or, we have that method and means now with the Phantom S-4. We can go down to a depth of 1,500 feet with an articulating arm and be able to grab onto to ah someone who may have drowned. It s already been used to recover one native snowmobiler that went through the ice in the St. Mary s River so that is an area that is not known as well, how the, we re working with tribal folks in terms of body recovery in those waters. COR: Yeah, that s interesting. Where do you keep it? DBT: We have a research vessel called the David Boyd. It s 42-foot dive vessel, probably state-of-the-art, highest way of, all the latest and greatest gear, we re going to upgrading this coming year to a HD television on the Phantom S-4, fiber optic cable running down to 1,500 feet so we can do clear transmissions of that high definition video. 16