The Nation - News from May 7, 1989

As a dozen Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources boats cleared a path through sport fishermen shouting racial slurs, nine boats full of Chippewa Indians, protected under treaty rights, slipped into the waters of Butternut Lake to begin spearfishing. The crowd protesting the Indians’ right to spearfish on off-reservation lakes was estimated at 1,000. Spearfishing begins during spring spawning, ahead of the general fishing season, and is regulated by the Indians. It is more productive than rod-and-reel fishing and the state as a result has limited rod-and-reel catches of walleyed pike on 254 lakes. Meanwhile, hundreds of people gathered at the Lac du Flambeau tribal center to show their support for Chippewa treaty rights. The tribe began spearing fish on northern lakes five years ago under a court-upheld guarantee of 19th-Century treaties that ceded much of northern Wisconsin to the United States.