'It Happens Here' explores contrasting views of land ownership

Emily Bright: This week, we've been talking with people who are trying to make a difference through their land. But not everyone has the same ideas about what it means to have land or to own it. This next story by our friends at WTIP Community Radio contrasts traditional Ojibwe views about land with the US government's approach.

As you'll hear, this disconnect played an important role in the ongoing history of treaties and tribal sovereignty. Here's an episode of "It Happens Here, the Roots of Racial Inequity on the North Shore" from producers, Leah Lemm and Stacy Drouillard.

NORMAN DESCHAMPE: I think, starting out, would be a basic concept of tribal people have a whole different idea of land ownership.

LEAH LEMM: Boozhoo. Hello. I'm Leah Lemm. Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe citizen, an independent producer and host of the Native Lights podcast.

STACY DROUILLARD: And I'm Stacy Drouillard, Grand Portage Ojibwe descendant and WTIP producer. "It Happens Here" explores the diversity of our community history through the stories and experiences of people of color on the North Shore.

LEAH LEMM: This segment takes a closer look at the land that we live on and how different cultural views about land and property have created misunderstandings about tribal sovereignty and the nature of treaties. Here's some background from Bemidji State professor of Ojibwe language and culture, Anton Treuer.

ANTON TREUER: The Ojibwe didn't give right, title, and ownership of land to the French. They said, oh, some of you want to come and live with us? We're willing to share this space with you. Welcome. When you skip forward to the American period, this was a big misunderstanding in the treaty period.

STACY DROUILLARD: Before European colonization, the Lake Superior Ojibwe did not understand the concept of exclusive land ownership, which is a European way of viewing property.

ANTON TREUER: In the Ojibwe world, the relationship was different. And that doesn't mean that the Ojibwe were simple or that they didn't think they had rights to things or something like that. But the concept worked like this. There were kind of two classifications for land in the Ojibwe world.

One was land that all others were excluded from. So we understood this. We even fought wars with other tribes to expand our territory or protect territory from intruders, to protect our access to resources on the territory, and so forth.

LEAH LEMM: The other cultural view of land was more fluid and less exclusionary, depending on the location and circumstances of the time.

ANTON TREUER: We also understood that there were some kinds of land that we would open up to share use with other people. So even when the Ojibwe and the Dakota were at war, there would sometimes be a little strip of territory on the edge of Ojibwe Dakota lands where neither tribe kept a village, but both tribes would travel to hunt, fish. Sometimes William Warren explains this in his book.

Sometimes they'd even camp and live together in the winter months, in particular. He called the process [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], to enter one another's lodges. And then sometimes in the spring, they might be back into conflict with one another, but that there would be shared use lands.

LEAH LEMM: The Treaty of 1837 is the first time that Ojibwe homelands were ceded to the United States. But the Ojibwe people still retain the right to hunt, fish, and gather on ceded territory.

STACY DROUILLARD: In 1842 and 1847, large tracts of Ojibwe homelands were ceded, with access to those lands still retained by the Ojibwe bands.

ANTON TREUER: The Ojibwe have written in clauses that speak to the parties to this treaty retain the perpetual right of hunting, fishing, and encampment and use, so long as grasses grow and rivers flow. And these kind of legal folks have called use of fructory rights or use rights are written into all the treaties.

STACY DROUILLARD: The Treaty of 1854 signed at La Pointe, Wisconsin affected all of Northeastern Minnesota. According to the historian Will Raff, in September of 1854, land and mineral prospectors were lined up in their boats just offshore at [INAUDIBLE] Grand Marais, waiting for news of the treaty's signing. They were anxious to make a land claim and acquire property on the North Shore. But the Ojibwe people saw it in a very different way.

ANTON TREUER: What the Ojibwe understood was that, by signing a treaty, they were changing the classification of land that had been their exclusive land for their exclusive use and occupancy and changed its categorization to shared use and wanted to be careful to clearly articulate that they retain their own ownership and use of the land. So like the 1854 treaty said that land would be opened to shared use and white settlement, but eventually, the Ojibwe would be allowed to pick reservations as parcels of land from which they would exclude all others. And the 1854 treaty didn't even say, here's where the reservations are going to be.

The Ojibwe people could actually pick them out any time to exclude everybody from those parcels and would retain ownership and use of the other parcels to share with other people. That was the Ojibwe understanding. And the way Ojibwe people understood those treaties at the time is the legal standard for how they should be affected and honored today in American law.

It's really interesting. American officials understood the treaties the same way from the middle of the 1800s through the early 1900s. There are all kinds of documents written by officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs that spoke about the reservation lands that all others would be excluded from and the continued Ojibwe right to use and live anywhere they wanted to in the entire treaty area. Once you get into the later-- into the 1900s, that stuff falls out of consciousness for most American citizens.

And by then, you're starting to get first and second generation white settlers. And then by the time you hit World War II, its third and fourth generation white settlers, who don't understand and have never even read a treaty. And so they understand, the Indians sold the land, and we own it now. But that is not how Ojibwe people understood it. And it's a big issue today with regard to treaty rights, access to sacred sites, resources, food sovereignty, and all kinds of other really important issues.

LEAH LEMM: To this day, reservation lands at Grand Portage are held in common. And no parcels of land were privately owned until after the Allotment Act of 1887. Here's former Grand Portage tribal chairman, Norman Deschampe, from a conversation he had with WTIP in 2011.

NORMAN DESCHAMPE: Our whole culture is based on our environment and where we live and what surrounds us. I think starting out would be a basic concept of tribal people have a whole different idea of land ownership. At Grand Portage, we, people, that land, they live on, they do not own it. They have the right to live there for as long as they want or as long as they're alive.

But it's a whole different concept. It goes all the way back to when the treaties were signed that Indian people were signing documents that they didn't really understand. They had no concept of-- they didn't believe in land ownership and had no concept of what that meant, which is a really basic difference between how you look at everything.

LEAH LEMM: For WTIP, I'm Leah Lemm.

STACY DROUILLARD: And I'm Stacy Drouillard. Miigwech for tuning in. "It Happens Here" is a production of WTIP North Shore Community Radio. Support for the series comes from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Emily Bright: And that was Stacy Drouillard and Leah Lemm. Tune in next week to hear another episode of the award winning podcast, "It Happens Here," the roots of racial inequity on the North Shore from WTIP in Grand Marais. And you can find the whole series at WTIP.org.