Moderator:

George Spangler

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George Spangler was born in Lassen County, California. George grew up in the mountains, the foothills, the valleys of the great Sacramento River - that's gold country - and learned to hunt and fish in the traditional land of the Yana and Maidu. He graduated in fisheries biology from Humboldt State College in 1964 and studied muskellunge, sea lamprey and whitefish for his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Toronto. From 1969 to 1978, George was a research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Lake Huron Research Unit. His research there focused on the fisheries and the ecology of Great Lakes fishes. In 1978, George joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota, where for the past 30 years he researched and taught courses in population dynamics of fish, Indian treaty rights, and developmental studies and social change. He's now retired in southeastern Minnesota. George and his wife, Kay, wife of 47 years, have reentered small town community life in the Root River Valley where they enjoy gardening, golfing, and fishing. They look forward to broader travels in the next few years.

“We had a little warning in the literature not long ago. This warning was from the American Friends Service Committee in the 1970s and the quotation basically says: “be careful about disturbing the balance of nature. You know not what you do and it might be very, very dangerous.” By analogy we can extend this observation about disturbing the human nature to an additional corollary which is that it is entirely reasonable that cultural harmony should be protected just as well as the ecological balances implicit in the relationships between non-humans and their environment.”

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Panelists:

Jon Gilbert

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Jonathan Gilbert (MS Fish and Wildlife, Michigan State University, Ph.D. Wildlife Ecology, UW-Madison), began with the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission in 1984. Currently, he is the Commission’s Wildlife Section Leader acting as a technical advisor to tribes with off-reservation treaty rights. Jonathan participated in the early negotiations with the WDNR as part of the Voigt Intertribal Task Force and acted as an expert witness for tribes during the species trials in Voigt. Jonathan has managed harvests of waawaashkeshiwag (deer), makwag (bears) and furbearers by tribes during the past 25 years; with interests in forest carnivores and their role in northern forest ecosystems, particularly gidagaa-biziwag (bobcats), ojiigwag (fishers) and more recently waabizheshiwag (martens).

“Harvest management is recording harvest and quantifying how much has been taken. This is the central role of GLIFWC. This is what our job is primarily. Implementation of treaty rights means enabling native Anishinaabe, Ojibwe Indians to go out and harvest resources through the establishment of rules and regulations. This includes all of the permits and tags. We need to make sure it's done in an orderly way while also counting what's harvested and reporting on that.”

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Michael Staggs

Michael Staggs has been the Director of the Bureau of Fisheries Management for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) since 1997. He joined the Department in 1982 and also served as the fish and wildlife statistician in the Bureau of Research, fisheries staff specialist in the Bureau of Fisheries Management and Chief of the Fish Research Section of the Bureau of Research. He holds a BS degree in Zoology from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Science degree in Fisheries Science and Biometry from Cornell University. He has been involved with ceded territory treaty fishing issues since 1985 as a member of the state-tribal technical working group and the Department's treaty fishing litigation team, and as lead negotiator for the current Lake Superior state-tribal fishing agreement.

“We have come a long way. We work hard together. I think the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission deserves a lot of credit for being a partner there and pushing us in many respects to improve our management. And I would also say that especially looking at these kinds of examples, a lot of the progress that we've made in the biological arena here has come through discussion, negotiation and agreement. We did litigate some items, but the vast majority of what we're doing today came about by agreement, and I hope that that will be a model for the future.”

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John Olson

John Olson, is the Furbearer Specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. John has been active in wildlife management for over 34 years and has been with the Department since just about biblical times! He began as a field wildlife limited term employee working in Douglas and Bayfield Counties before accepting the position as the Forest Habitat Coordinator for the old time Northwest District. He then transferred his workload to Mercer where he barely survived as a wildlife biologist for 10 years, working specifically with bald eagles, common loons, ospreys and black bears. He then escaped into the Coulee Country as an area wildlife supervisor for 3 years. Eventually, he found Nirvana. Beginning in 1993, he worked with treaty-wildlife and furbearers,. Since then, trapper education and trap research has become a big part of the his effort in Wisconsin. John also works with GLIFWC on furbearer management and research, coordinates tribal declarations for such species as bobcat, fisher, and river otter, and is a long-standing, active member of the Wild Rice Committee. Personally, John describes himself as a “paddling gatherer” - from gardens to grouse, wild rice to elk, muskrats to maple syrup, if it can grow out there, allows an annual harvest, he’ll collect it, and stuff it into a quart jar.

“Have treaty rights negatively affected wildlife resources that live or move through the ceded territories of northern Wisconsin? No, they have not. The traditional and protected harvest of terrestrial wildlife has mostly been common to all hunters and trappers whether native or non-native. It normally occurs by individual hunters or trappers scattered across the millions of acres of our public forest or our wetlands. Because registration and accountability that Jonathan [Gilbert] talked about occurs and because it’s similar to state managed seasons, results can be reviewed and compared easily.”

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George Newago

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George Newago is involved in youth work for First American Prevention Center in Red Cliff teaching youth to make healthy decisions and utilize natural resources wisely. George is an experienced netter, spearer, sugarer and moose hunter. He has been active in the exercise of treaty hunting, fishing and gathering rights for many years.

“I've been so blessed to have learned of the things we need to do and you can't forget that. We sit here and we talk about all the things we need to remember. We need to remember our elders. It’s hard to talk because I think about the people that taught me what I know. My dad, Sam Newago, and my uncle, Mike Newago, those were men. They didn't wear feathers in their hair, they didn't smoke pipes, but they were Shinaabe [Ojibwe] every day. They lived their life Shinaabe. And that's our responsibility. And the impact of harvest is we need to teach our children. We need to teach our people to remember where we are from and who we are because those treaties are us. That's our life.”

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