Case for Reservation.
- Brandon Michael Chew
- Jul 6, 2020
- 5 min read
In March, 1836, representatives of Indigenous tribes in Michigan met with politicians in Washington D.C. to negotiate the terms of a land treaty.
Just six years prior, U.S. President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which sought to displace Indigenous people east of the Mississippi River. Tribes such as the Potawatomi would see their communities forcibly removed from southern Michigan and northern Indiana, to reservations in states such as Kansas and Oklahoma.
Hoping to avoid a similar fate, members of the Odawa and Ojibway nations negotiated with the United States, represented by Henry Schoolcraft, on a land resolution. It would eventually be agreed that the nations would cede over 13 million acres of land, in exchange for over 50,000 acres of reservation.
Henry Schoolcraft (1793 - 1864)
The second article of the treaty stated the reservations were to include “one tract of fifty thousand acres to be located on Little Traverse Bay: one tract of twenty thousand acres to be located on the north shore of Grand Traverse bay, one tract of seventy thousand acres to be located on, or, north of the Pieire Marquetta river,” as well as other tracts of land.
The third article made similar promises of land reservations stating “there shall also be reserved for the use of the Chippewas living north of the straits of Michilimackinac,” and going on to list areas such as Beaver Island to be “for the use of the Beaver-island Indians.”
The people of the Odawa and Ojibway nations left Washington D.C. satisfied that they could preserve their culture and way of life on these reservations for future generations. However, virtually as soon as the nations’ representatives left to return to Michigan, the United States began rewriting the terms of the treaty.
Led primarily by Henry Schoolcraft, the United States added the following text to the treaty in order to nullify the document:
[Note.--The following treaty, and supplementary article, was ratified and confirmed with the following amendments, as expressed in the resolution of the Senate:
Article Two, line two, after the word, “tracts,” insert the following words, to wit: “for the term of five years from the date of the ratification of this treaty, and no longer;” unless the United States grant them permission to remain on said lands for a longer period.
Article Three, after the word "tracts," in the second line, insert the following words to wit: For the term of five years from the date of the ratification of this treaty, and no longer, unless the United States grant them permission to remain on said lands for a longer period.
The United States negotiated a land treaty with Indigenous people, and then re-wrote the treaty once they left so that it was only valid for a five-year period.
In response, Indigenous people in Northern Michigan quickly set about acquiring titles to their lands, as well as starting a process of “civilizing” their culture. This included inviting missionaries onto their lands to build churches, such as a church in Burt Lake founded by Bishop Frederic Baraga in 1838 (Rogers, 2017).
In 1855 the Treaty of Detroit was signed, which took away the threat of outright removal/relocation of the Indigenous people. However, the Odawa continued having to fight for their land rights against lumber barons as Michigan’s lumber industry became increasingly lucrative in the second half of the 1800’s.
Photo taken between 1890 and 1899.
Over the following decades the Odawa became a minority to the white settlers. With this influx of a white populous, Odawa culture slowly evaporated and little regard was given to the legitimacy of the reservations' land.
The Holy Childhood boarding school in Harbor Springs reprimanded students for practicing Odawa culture from the 1880’s, until its closure in 1983 (NPR, 2017). Such boarding schools sought to un-educate these children on practicing Odawa culture.
When land wasn’t swindled from Indigenous people, it was often violently taken from them.
In the fall of 1900, timber speculator John McGinn, supported by Cheboygan County Sheriff Fred Ming, walked into the Burt Lake Indian Village and displaced the entire community, (Rogers, 2017). While the men of the village were away on work, the elders, women, and children were removed from their homes, which were then doused in kerosene and set ablaze.
The village was completely destroyed, with the exception of a few cabins and the church built by Frederic Baraga. Many of those displaced were forced to walk 30 miles to relocate in Cross Village.
“William Sydow, a farm boy who was 15 at the time of the incident, told the Detroit News in 1969: ‘The women and children sat in the road and watched their homes burn down. There was nothing they could do. Their men were away. We thought it was all wrong. But we didn’t think there was anything we could do,’” (Rogers, 2017).
Burt Lake Indian Village (1890)
Indigenous people in northern Michigan continued to fight for the recognition of their rights throughout the 20th Century.
In 1948 the Northern Michigan Ottawa Association was founded by Robert and Waunetta Dominic. The association fought for compensation from previous treaties, as well as for the tribes' hunting and fishing rights.
Notably, a claims commission found that “the Ottawa and Chippewa--should have been paid 90 cents an acre, and Congress appropriated $10.3 million to make up the difference,” in 1971, (Dammann, 1997).
Even more notable, in 1994 the 103rd Congress passed a bill recognizing that “The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Ottawa Indians, and the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians are descendents of, and political successors to, signatories of the 1836 Treaty of Washington and the 1855 Treaty of Detroit.”
Despite this progress, the greatest threat to Indigenous people’s fishing areas is possibly soon to come.
Enbridge's "Line 5" pipeline. Straits of Mackinac.
Enbridge, Inc., a Canadian oil company, owns and operates “Line 5,” an oil pipeline that runs through the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
The Line 5 pipeline was constructed in 1953, and has leaked at least 1.1 million gallons of crude oil since 1968 (Ellison, 2017).
Enbridge’s safety record is abysmal as the company is responsible for the largest-ever land-based oil spill when on July 26, 2010, a pipeline in Marshall, Michigan, leaked over 840,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River.
In 2018 it was reported that Enbridge agreed “to pay a $1.8 million fine for failing to thoroughly inspect its pipelines for weaknesses,” (Hasemyer, 2018).
In June, 2020, Enbrige was fined $6.7 million by the Environmental Protection Agency after it was found that the company “neglected to properly evaluate thousands of ‘shallow dents’ on its Lakehead Pipeline System,” (Matheny, 2020).
Every passing day in which Line 5 isn’t completely shut down presents an existential crisis for Odawa fishing rights that ought to be protected under the agreements of the 1836 and 1855 treaties.
Use the link below to learn more about the threat Line 5 poses and if you live in Michigan pressure your representative(s) into supporting the closure of Line 5:
And if Michigan Odawa truly are the “political successors to signatories of the 1836 Treaty of Washington and the 1855 Treaty of Detroit,” then they deserve nothing less than complete sovereignty over the land agreed upon in these treaties.
SOURCES:
1836 Treaty of Washington
1855 Treaty of Detroit
Odawa Indians History
“History of Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.”
“Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and the Little River Band of Odawa Indians Act.”
Stateside Staff. (2017). A Harbor Springs boarding school worked to erase Odawa culture until the 1980s. NPR.
Rogers, D. (2017). 117 YEAR TRAVESTY: Cheboygan Burt Lake Indian Band Sues for Justice. http://www.mybaycity.com/scripts/p3_v2/P3V3-0200.cfm?P3_ArticleID=10721
Dammann, S. G. (1997) LONG-AWAITED LAND SETTLEMENT IN SIGHT FOR MICHIGAN TRIBES. Chicago Tribune.
Ellison, G. (2017). Enbridge Line 5 has spilled at least 1.1M gallons in past 50 years. MLive.
Hasemyer, D. (2018). Enbridge Fined for Failing to Fully Inspect Pipelines After Kalamazoo Oil Spill. Inside Climate News. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03052018/enbridge-fined-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-inspections-kalamazoo-michigan-dilbit-spill
Matheny, K. (2020). EPA fines Enbridge $6.7M over failure to fix pipeline safety issues. Detroit Free Press
WHITE PINE LOGGING: A BACKGROUND. Michigan State University.
Bingham, E. (2018). Century-old photos show the epic scale of Michigan’s lumber era. MLive.
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