Moderators:

Patty Loew

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Patty Loew is an Associate Professor in the Department of Life Science Communication at UW-Madison where she teaches Native American environmental issues and the media and digital video documentary productions, which we were all privileged to see during our lunch break. She also produces documentary segments and hosts ‘In Wisconsin’, a statewide news and public affairs program for Wisconsin Public Television. An enrolled member of Bad River Band, Patty has produced more than a dozen award-winning documentaries on Native American topics, including "Spring of Discontent," which aired regionally on ABC affiliates, and "Nation Within a Nation," which aired on PBS. Her newest documentary, "Way of the Warrior," which examines the role of Native American veterans in the 20th Century, aired nationally on PBS in November, 2007. Her book, "Indian Nations of Wisconsin, Histories of Endurance and Renewal," won the Wisconsin Library Association 2002 Outstanding Achievement Recognition Award. In 2003, the State Historical Society's Office of School Services published a children's version of the book. In 1998, Patty received her Ph.D. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“I never learned about treaty rights when I was in school. Civics class taught that we have local government, state government, and the federal government. You have three branches of government. They never taught anything about tribal sovereignty. So, now we have these journalists going into communities who don't have any concept of treaties, or sovereignty or self-determination. They're getting material from these well-oiled anti-treaty groups. They're getting sound bites from the governor and state agencies who are worried about protecting their turf. This is why the media coverage was so bad in those early days.”

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Note: Patty Loew and James Thannum’s article, “After the Storm: Ojibwe Treaty Rights Twenty-Five Years after the Voigt Decision,” was printed in the American Indian Quarterly Volume 35, Number 2, Spring 2011 edition. Follow link to view this article: Read Article

Rick St. Germaine

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Rick St. Germaine, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is a member and former Chair of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. He received his BA in Secondary Education at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire and his M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Educational Administration from Arizona State University in 1972 and 1975 respectively. He spent two years, 2000-2002, at Harvard University where he was Senior Visiting Scholar with the Kennedy School of Government and Lecturer with the Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA. Rick provides extensive school professional development training services, including significant contributions in developing curriculum and providing training to implement “Act 31,” Wisconsin’s Law requiring public schools to teach Native American History, culture, and treaty rights. He recently helped found the Life Skills Center for Leadership, a non-profit organization whose goal is to positively impact the lives of high risk American Indian youth through intensive training and adventure-based learning experiences, as well as coordinated planning and development of two American Indian K-12 charter schools at Minisinaakwaang and Aazhoomog, Minnesota.

“The Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission brought political credibility into my life. When I was ten years old in the late 1950s, I once watched with deep fascination a Wisconsin DNR creel survey boat moving by me late at night electro-shocking large muskies, walleyes, and pickerel fish very close to where I was spearfishing on the Lac Courte Oreilles Lake. In those days on an isolated Indian reservation, little boys never imagined that they would one day grow up to see their own tribal institutions do something as scientifically remarkable as this. GLIFWC, you have brought political significance into my life.”

Panelists:

Tom Maulson

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Tom Maulson is a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band and a former member of the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Council, including terms as the council president. He also was a judge for the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Court. Maulson served as Lac du Flambeau representative on the GLIFWC’s Board of Commissioners during the period 1989 to 2004, and he was Board chairman from 1994 to 2004. He has been either a representative to or the chair of the Commission's Voigt Intertribal Task Force from its inception in 1985 to present, serving as the Task Force chair from 1986 to 2008. Tom is well-known for his role as Task Force spokesperson and in exercising treaty rights during the turbulent times of the late 1980's when there were boat landing protests during tribal spearfishing seasons in northern Wisconsin.

“Today, we have young people saying, “Why?” 25 years ago, we were saying, “Why? Why are these rednecks wanting to do the things not only to myself but also to our women?” You had to be there to feel that. People I can tell you this: It wasn't easy to be an Indian, and it's still not today. It's tough out there. We are the only people that are still in bondage. We continue have to do certain things as Anishinaabe people including getting agreements from governments or from the Great White Father, as our forefathers used to say. It's time the leaders stand up to be leaders.”

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Brian Pierson

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Brian Pierson, of Godfrey and Kahn, Attorneys at Law, leads the firm’s Indian nation law practice group. He is a cum laude graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1983. Brian clerked for Federal District Judge Myron Gordon before entering private practice. He won the ACLU-Wisconsin Civil Libertarian of the Year Award for his representation of Chippewa spear fishers in the federal court lawsuit against hooligans seeking to prevent tribal members from exercising off-reservation fishing rights reserved in the treaties of 1837 and 1842. The suit, Lac du Flambeau v. STA, resulted in a permanent injunction against interference with treaty protected spearfishing.

“Jim [Zorn] invited me to be on the program because it was my privilege to work with Tom Maulson and many others in a lawsuit that we brought in 1991 as sort of a phase three of the treaty rights struggle, phase one being the establishment of the right to go off reservation under the 1837 and 1842 treaties and harvest natural resources on the ceded territories, by the decision by Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The second phase was the litigation that lasted from that decision until 1991 that determined the scope of the treaty right. And the case that I was fortunate to be involved with was a civil rights case. It was not a treaty rights case but a case brought under federal civil rights laws to protect the exercise of those rights.”

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Sharon Metz

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Sharon Metz is the founder of HONOR, Honor our Neighbors Origins and Rights. Sharon served as HONOR's Executive Director from 1990 to 1996. Under her guidance, HONOR was able to organize a national Native rights advocacy network, bringing in a strong non-Indian support to stand with the tribes on a variety of issues. Her commitment to human rights has been long and well-lived. A graduate of UW-Green Bay with a major in communication, a minor in business administration, she served as a VISTA volunteer and program assistant during the periods 1971 to 1974. In 1975, Sharon was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly representing the Green Bay area, where she served through 1987 and was an active member of the Assembly Committee on Indian Affairs. Following her political career, she became the Executive Director of Lutheran Human Relations in Milwaukee from 1987 to 1990, continuing her support of Native rights in that position.

“Wisconsin changed forever in the '80s. It had survived the Peshtigo fire. It had survived a depression and World War II. I had thought that racial hostility was resolved because it had just resolved some of the racial issues by court case in Milwaukee. And then the treaties that were signed long ago didn't have the grace to disappear. They not only didn't disappear, but the tribal people read them and began to exercise what the treaties said was the thing to do. And when they read them, they knew it wasn’t right.”

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Don Wedll

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Don Wedll moved to Alaska in June 2009, and he now serves as the NEPA coordinator for the Association of Village Council Presidents in Bethel. Prior to that, he worked for the Mille Lacs Band in Onamia, Minnesota during the period 1974 to 2008, serving in a number of capacities, including Commissioner of Education, Chief of Police, Commissioner of Natural Resources, long-range planner and advisor to the chief executive. He was educated as a mathematician and a teacher. As Commissioner of National Resources, Don served as Mille Lacs representative to the GLIFWC's Board of Commissioners from 1985 to 2001, serving as the board vice-chair on the Board's Executive Committee for a number of years during that tenure. He also served as the tribe's representatives to the Commission's Voigt Intertribal Task Force from its inception in 1983 to 2001. Wedll was instrumental in achieving recognition and implementation of treaty rights in the 1837 to 1842 ceded territories and particularly in achieving successes realized in the Mille Lacs versus State of Minnesota case.

“In the future, I think, the things that GLIFWC will do, and the people working for GLIFWC will help develop, will be the access to resources so that people can utilize them in a meaningful way. As tribal governments now move ahead with new issues and with new concepts, some of that was talked about yesterday regarding the relationships of how resources will be managed, will be dealt with. What's the best way to deal with global warming? All of those impacts are things that are going to be issues for the future.”

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