MI: Saving Ma’iingan: Why Michigan’s Indian tribes want to block wolf hunt

Written by
Louise Knott Ahern

Jimmie Mitchell keeps a screen saver on his computer, a photo of children he never knew in a place he’s never been.

It’s an image of students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a Pennsylvania boarding school founded in 1879 where American Indian children were sent to learn how to assimilate into a white world.

Mitchell — a member of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians tribe — said his aunts and uncles were among the thousands of Indian children who were taken from their parents over a 40-year period and placed in boarding schools such as Carlisle. There, the children were forced to forget their language, their culture and even their native names.

“It breaks my heart,” said Mitchell, who heads his tribal government’s natural resources department. “My uncle is still alive. When I try to speak to him in our language, he says, ‘I understand everything you’re saying to me. But I can’t, the words get stuck in my throat.’ ”

It would take nearly a century — until the 1978 passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act — for native culture to enjoy a widespread resurgence, Mitchell said.

“You could be proud to be an Indian again,” he said, “rather than feeling like a second-class citizen or not even human at all.”

That long-fought pride is why he and members of other Michigan American Indian tribes are increasingly nervous about what’s happening to another important piece of their heritage and culture — the Great Lakes gray wolf.

Indian tribes are among the most vocal opponents of a proposed hunting season for wolves in Michigan. They’ve joined the Humane Society and other wildlife advocates in a petition drive to try to put the issue on a statewide ballot in 2014 and to block legislation passed in December last year that classified wolves as a game species.

The Keep Michigan Wolves Protected campaign hopes to gather 225,000 signatures by March 27. To date, they’ve gathered nearly 200,000.

Proponents of a wolf hunt say the animals have thrived well beyond the original population goal of 200 when they were placed on the endangered species list in 1973. With 700 to 1,000 wolves in Michigan today, Upper Peninsula residents say wolves are coming too close to homes and towns and are attacking livestock.

Wolf advocates, however, say the wolf population in Michigan is still too fragile to be hunted. It’s been just over one year since the animals were removed from the federal endangered species list, said Jill Fritz, Michigan director of the Humane Society of the United States. She said the animals have not had enough time to maintain and thrive outside federal protection.

For Indians, the issue goes much deeper.

Back to creation

In the beginning of time, the Creator made Anishinaabe, the original man, and his brother Ma’iingan, the wolf. Together, they walked the Earth naming all of the other creatures on the planet.

There came a time when the Creator said the two must live apart but warned that whatever happened to one would happen to the other. To this day, the wolf howls in mourning for the loss of his friend, Anishinaabe.

The connection between animal and man, environment and the human condition, are prevelent in nearly all indigenous creation stories.

For Michigan’s native populations, however, the wolf is a central player in not only their past, but also their future, said Aaron Payment, chairman of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

There is a direct parallel, Payment says, between the eradication of wolves from Michigan and the decline of its native populations.

Though wolves once roamed every section of Michigan, they were all but wiped out in the Lower Peninsula and only a handful remained in the U.P. by the early part of the 20th century because of aggressive, systematic hunting by white settlers.

At the same time, Michigan’s native people became impoverished as they were moved off their land, their population a fraction of what it had been at the time Europeans arrived.

They can never let it happen again, Mitchell said.

“We are so connected to our environment,” he said. “Those plants and animals are a part of who we are, a cultural dimension of how we exist. Having them around us, our culture will flourish. When they are absent, our culture falls into impoverishment.”

Legal remedies

Tribal leaders say they have more than a cultural stake in the wolf, however.

They also believe the state has a legal obligation to give Michigan’s tribes an equal say in the management of the wolf and other wildlife species because of a treaty signed in 1836.

The Treaty of Washington was an agreement between the Ottawa and Chippewa nations and the United States in which the Indians agreed to cede 13 million acres of tribal land to the U.S. government — a move that paved the way for Michigan to become a state in 1837.

In return, Indians were granted unlimited hunting, gathering and fishing rights to the land.

In 2007, the treaty was strengthened in a court-mandated consent decree between the Department of Natural Resources and the tribes. The agreement requires the DNR to manage the state’s natural resources based on “sound scientific management” and to coordinate their efforts with the tribes.

Payment said the state is not living up to that mandate with the wolf issue. It’s not enough, he said, that tribal leaders have been invited to speak at public hearings before the Legislature or the Natural Resources Commission.

Further, he said the DNR has not provided adequate scientific evidence that Michigan cannot sustain the current wolf population without human conflict.

“What is the biological basis for a hunt,” he asked.

Still in talks

State officials hope to answer that question and more in the next few months through a series of public hearings and meetings with tribal leaders. DNR officials are in Marquette this week meeting with representatives of Michigan’s 12 Indian tribes.

DNR tribal coordinator Dennis Knapp said they’re doing everything required of them by not only the 2007 consent decree, but also a 2002 Tribal-State Accord, which requires each side to work together on issues that would significantly impact either government.

Since the wolf hunt is still in the idea stage — no decision has been made or even officially proposed for action by the Natural Resources Commission — the state has not violated the terms of the consent decree, Knapp said.

“The process is not at the point where a proposal is on the table,” he said. “So we’re consulting without specifics at this point. But we are inviting all Michigan tribes for consultation.”

Knapp added that tribes were also represented in a roundtable that crafted the state’s current Wolf Management Plan and signed off on the plan’s call for a wolf hunt should the need arise.

The Wolf Management Plan calls for two hunting options — a statewide recreational hunt like a deer season or a small hunt designed to help specific regions deal with wolves that are causing problems.

It’s the second type of hunt that’s being considered by the state’s Natural Resources Commission.

That’s not much comfort to tribal leaders.

“Whatever befalls one will befall the other,” said Mitchell. “There is a correlation. As the tribes began to heal, the wolf began to heal. Do we risk the possibility of the population being hunted beyond sustainability and lose them again?”

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