Indigenous Governance Database
Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians Constitution
Location: Wisconsin Population: 924 Date of Constitution: as amended 1991
Preserving Culture: 6 Early Childhood Language Immersion Programs
Language immersion schools have proved to be enormously beneficial for young learners’ academics. To quote Dr. Janine Pease-Pretty on Top, Crow, founding president of Little Big Horn College, “Solid data from the Navajo, Blackfeet and Assiniboine immersion schools experience indicates that the…
Red Cliff Chippewa Band Re-Dredges 55-Gallon Drums of Live World War 2 Ammo From Lake Superior
The Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is having another go at the munitions barrels dumped into their waters by the Army Corps of Engineers during the Cold War years. Nearly 1,500 55-gallon drums were interred beneath the lake on orders of the U.S. Department of Defense from 1959 to 1962. In…
Investing in Fish, Preserving Red Cliff Culture
Small fingerlings roiled the water in the translucent plastic tubs placed before ready volunteers in the Red Cliff tribal fish hatchery at Wisconsin’s northern edge. The agitated three- to six-inch coaster brook trout–known as fry–made the water appear to be boiling. A mild anesthetic was added and…
A New Shoreline Tribal Park
The 87 acres at Frog Bay in Wisconsin recently designated as a park offer views of five Apostle Islands, pristine sandy beaches at the top of Bayfield Peninsula and a rare opportunity for the public to visit tribally owned and protected lands. Frog Bay Tribal National Park was created when the Red…
Ojibwe Treaty Rights
As years passed between the signing of treaties and today, American Indians living in Wisconsin re-discovered that they had the right to hunt and fish on the ceded territories, just as their ancestors did. Two brothers took it upon themselves to get arrested for exercising their rights in an…
The Ways: Lake Superior Whitefish: Carrying on a Family Tradition
The Petersons are part of a long tradition of commercial fishing among Lake Superior tribes. Avid fishermen for subsistence prior to European settlement, the Lake Superior Chippewa quickly found Gichigami’s (Ojibwe word for Lake Superior) fish to be a valued trade item once explorers penetrated to…