- [Ernie] On this Native Report, we share the journey from Squaw Lake to Amber Lake, a tribal nation's success and changing a lake's name that offended many.

- Once you learn something is offensive, it doesn't change just because it doesn't offend you.

- [Rita] And we tag along with an inter-tribal natural resource management agency as they conduct nighttime electrofishing surveys.

- [Ernie] Plus an Ojibwe chef uses harvest from a tribal nation's garden to feed a community.

- We also learn what we can do a delete healthier lives and hear from our elders.

- [Announcer] Production for Native Report is made possible by grants from the Blandin Foundation.

Anishinabe Fund and Alexandra Smith Fund in support of Native American treaty rights administered through the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation.

(native music) - Welcome to Native Report and thanks for tuning in.

I'm Ernie Stevens.

- Thanks Ernie.

I'm Rita Karppinen In this episode, we're exploring the nourishment of our natural resources from food sovereignty to fish species protection.

And we dig deeper into the importance of the names of our natural resources.

- That's right, we'll start with a story from Northern Wisconsin were a tribal nation was successful in changing the name of a lake that has long been rendered a racial slur of native women, but it was a difficult task to execute for a number of reasons and one being the lake resides off the tribe's land.

(acoustic guitar music) - We moved here from California and bought the property on the lake that was named this word that to me meant Indian maiden or Indian woman.

That's what we learned growing up.

But my husband, Mike and I, we love the property so much that the name became inconsequential.

All right.

See I'm the first mate, he's the captain.

Oh captain, my captain.

I hadn't been living here very long before it came up that the lake was under consideration for a change.

However, nothing came of it.

No one ever followed through.

I had not thought about this issue in many, many years and one of my neighbors, Tom Maulsen Jr. told me about the proposal to change the name of the lake.

I immediately sat up straight and said, "Yes, Tom, I'm very interested in this."

(acoustic music continues) - When I first addressed this issue, my daughters were around.

Seeing them growing up in the atmosphere of that word and them dealing with it with the high school down here being then integrated of tribal members and kids in the community, I pushed for it to be changed is the fact that I go past it every day.

And when my granddaughter was born, I decided at that moment that she was not going to know that that name existed.

This is my granddaughter Waawaatesi.

Her name means firefly.

There are people out there, they resist change.

I knew that living here and just knowing the people that I needed to contact to get things moving.

- Tom Tom came over to my house and I stood beside him to go for this changing because it's degrading to us.

It's not a good name for women.

It stems back from long time ago and the people would come here, especially the men that would say derogatory things to the Indian women.

- We don't know how it became the name squaw, but I know for a long, long time it was very derogatory towards our women.

One of our relatives here, Tom Maulsen Jr. came and approached us.

We took it from there and we went to the Wisconsin Geographical Name Change Board and our council find a resolution, filled out the paperwork and we had to have a name for it at that time so the Ojibwe name for a woman is ikwe, I-K-W-E and that's what we put on the petition and the resident did not want that name on there so we told them that was the name we used just to file a petition.

(acoustic music continues) - This is a map of Lac du Flambeau, the Indian reservation.

In the lower left-hand corner is penciled 1896.

It does indicate Squaw on there, if that was the correct year.

One thing that we all agreed on was that we didn't like the name that had been chosen.

Ikwe was the name and it means woman.

We thought, well, if the name of the lake has to change, then let's give the residents a chance to pick a name rather than having it dictated to them what it was going to be.

I was getting phone calls.

I was getting emails.

And what I was hearing from them was different reasons for them being against this.

I had to establish communications again with John Johnson, who was the new tribal chairman.

We're really connected well and I was optimistic that perhaps we could get the tribe to amend their petition and that the residents select a name.

- We invited them to our council, Some of their board members, they met with us and we had long discussions and they said it was a long time coming.

- I heard from the women on the tribal council, especially about what that name really represented to them and you could see it with visceral.

It hurt them.

You could just feel it.

Even though everybody was wearing masks, you could see it and feel it that this was something that really had been hurtful to them for a long time.

They just did not want that name squaw on the lake anymore.

- They wanted to use a different name so their Lake's Association had a meeting and that's what they came up with the name, Amber.

- Given the past history of our people, seemed like we're always fighting for something, you know.

I was really happy when I heard that it was going to change to Amber Lake.

As an indigenous woman, we are to be respected and loved and cherished as life-givers.

(acoustic music continues) - There were others who actually wrote letters to me in response to a letter I put out trying to educate people on this issue that said, "You don't like the name of the lake, move."

Or, "Why did you buy your property here if you thought the lake name was so offensive?"

Others who just say, "Hey, it doesn't offend me.

What's your problem?"

But my key thing is how can you be aware of the fact that this term is offensive to so many people, not just native people, how can you be aware of that and still deny it and still hold on to your own beliefs?

And I likened it to the N word, and of course the C word, both of which are banished from decent vocabulary and decent behavior, but we have an opportunity to right a wrong.

Once you learn something is offensive, it doesn't change just because it doesn't offend you.

We have faced some backlash.

What they did is you see where these, these are ripped, the posts are out there, and someone came with a saw and zzz on both of the signs.

This is the first time that they've actually been vandalized.

(acoustic music continues) It is my sincere hope that they understand it and support it because I don't feel like we can live peacefully until they do.

- As far as that word is concerned, it's not over.

I'm hoping that people understand what that word actually means and how it affects native women.

- We got to have some good in common, no matter what race we are.

We all gotta collaborate and we all gotta respect one another's wishes.

- I think of our generations to come and to leave a good legacy for them to know that they can walk with pride.

(acoustic music continues) - It was very important to the people of Lac du Flambeau band that this natural resource be named in a respectful, non-offensive way.

(native flute music) - What is my favorite traditional way?

It's living.

It's existing.

I tell you, you know, I get up in the morning because what people don't understand is that when your body rests, your spirit serves at night, everybody's night fires.

You just have to trust and believe.

These young ones these days, you know, they're just here, and it's like, they're kind of like a dried up sponge, you know, they shrivel.

And anytime it expands, it expands because it has something other than the purities of those waters of those first teachings and those downloads of memories.

Because within those teachings they say, in our prophecies and our bridge for expose, it says, you know, there comes a time when we will enter in the purest of waters and then we'll seek the most taintedness of wells.

And then when you're entering or ending the seventh fire into the eighth fire, is that you will be born in the most taintedness of wells and you will seek the most healthiest of water and you will find it.

What you need to do is you need to rebuild or refine, or even be introduced to that real feeling, that connection, those links, your ancestral links.

When you go, "I don't know my ancestors," you do 'cause they're in you.

You're here and you exist.

When children say, "I don't have that.

I don't have with me have that."

But you do because they're in you.

We say this to foster kids and adopted kids.

Even children that, I hate using this word, but one kid said to me, "You know, my parents don't want me.

They threw me away.

They'd rather be partying or with alcohol or doing drugs.

They like that than they like me more."

And I said, "Here's the lesson.

You argue with the darkness, your light will go out.

What you have to do is become brighter so that darkness starts seeing that doorway to get out.

You were born into this world to know that you're a student and you're here to learn and to walk on.

You're not here to fix anybody other than yourself."

There was a time in the next year, we never had that freedom of speech.

We never had that freedom before.

So the thing is, say you're pain.

When you're angry at something, don't be angry at the world.

Say, "I hurt because," and identify that hurt.

(native flute music) - Native Report visited those with the 1854 Treaty Authority to learn more about the agency and join them during electrofishing surveys at night.

Here's more on how they look for young wildlife to gauge reproductive success.

- Tonight we are conducting our annual fall walleye electrofishing surveys.

So each year each fall, we team up with Fond du Lac Natural Resources and conduct follow recruitment studies on 25 lakes within the 1854 seated territory.

We're in Cadotte Lake, just north of Duluth, Minnesota.

The main objective is to see what that, a zero year class and that one year old year class looks like now so we can get a better idea of what the spawning population will be from three to five years from now.

- Electrofishing's done at night.

All those are when the fish are in the shallows and we can access some to that gear and so we troll slowly along shore with our electrofishing boat and the boat is a large jon boat outfitted with a generator.

- We get conductivity readings, so that's how we're able to set our electricity in the water so we're not harming fish, but we're also able to shock them effectively.

So we will swing these two booms out and they are the anodes and the boat, these whiskers that sit down here, they're the cathodes.

So it creates electrical field and we'll be going real close to shore, like three to five feet of water, and these fish will get stunned and kind of swim towards the electrode and we'll have two netters up front.

They will scoop these fish and they'll put them in the live well here.

Within a minute, they're swimming around, they're back fine.

- And after they're recovered, we'll stop, we'll measure all the fish to get a length.

We'll take scales or spines off some of them so we can age them, get an idea of how fast they're growing.

- 270.

- Years ago they set up certain stations so each lake can have three to five stations and these are predetermined based on years ago they shocked the whole shoreline to figure out where these younger fish were hanging out.

- These again are done at night so it's quite the sight coming across the water.

You can hear the loud generator going, bright lights off the front of the vessel.

You see two people netting up front and there's sometimes misconceptions.

People are taking fish or killing fish, keeping fish, and that's not the case.

Again, the fish recover after a few minutes and all go back in the water.

It's really a safe and effective way to assess the fish population.

So I'm Darren Vogt, I'm Resource Management Division Director at 1854 Treaty Authority.

- 180.

- In the spring and the fall each year, we do different kinds of electrofishing surveys and these surveys are done to track the wildlife populations so in the fall, we're looking to get an index of the young of the year fish.

We're getting an idea how well reproduction has occurred over the last two years.

So it gives you an idea of what's called year class strength so you can see, you know, what kind of walleye population can be expected in the future as those fish grow.

- I'm Nick Bogyo, I'm a fisheries biologist with the 1854 Treaty Authority.

I work for Bois Forte and Grand Portage tribes and one of their main subsistence fish is walleyes so we are always trying to have a long-term data set so we can look at how well this population is doing and also enhance it and make sure that our band members are able to harvest for years to come.

- I like my job, but it's not just a job, it's really a cause.

And it's a cause that, you know, has really taken a long time for tribes as a whole because they always had these rights, but as they began to exercise these rights in the Midwest, like in the mid '80s, not everybody was very happy about that.

My name is Sonny Myers.

I'm the Executive Director of the 1854 Treaty Authority.

While the 1854 Treaty Authority is inter-tribal natural resource management organization and our job, our role, our reason for being is to implement the hunting, fishing and gathering rights of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on lands that were seated to the United States government under the Treaty of 1854.

And when I say the Treaty of 1854, we're really talking to what we now call Northeastern Minnesota, the whole Arrowhead region, what five plus million acres of a resource-rich land.

- And we're interested in preserving, protecting, enhancing your resources for present and future generation so we have a wide variety of programs.

One big one is harvest implementation management.

We have a wildlife program, fisheries, climate change and basin species, and finally, wild rice.

- So we have been delegated the authority to regulate these activities on behalf of the two bands and so we do have, we have a code that we have to go by and tells us what we can and can't do.

We have conservation officers that, among other things, you know, they try to make sure that people are abiding by the code, but our real bread and butter is really to get the bands out there and so our focus is on what do we need to do to get you hunting gear, gathering wild rice, you know, rabbits or whatever the case may be.

We would like them to get so interested that they might say, "I'd like to become a biologist."

We also spend a lot of time educating US Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, Minnesota Department of Natural Resource personnel, US Forest Service personnel, because they have a responsibility to work with us on a government-to-government relationship.

- The Treaty Authority is governed by a board of directors, which consists of members of the Grand Portage and Boise Fort Tribal Councils.

(gentle flute music) - All of us know someone consumed with anger and resentment.

We might even be that person.

It turns out these feelings have negative health consequences.

Who of us has not been hurt by the actions or words of someone else?

Criticism from a family member or a coworker, someone taking credit for your work or spreading rumors is always hurtful.

Sometimes hurts go deeper than that and it's easier for those feelings to swallow up who we want to be.

Long-lasting feelings of anger and bitterness can cost you dearly.

Depression, anxiety, sleep problems, stress, and high blood pressure are consequences of holding grudges.

Gaagigi in Ojibwe means to appease, apologize to, show respect to.

Gaagiizitaagozi means to forgive.

It means to decide to let go of feelings of resentment and thoughts of revenge.

It does not necessarily mean reconciliation and whoever hurt you might not want to have this discussion.

If you're in an abusive relationship, your healthcare provider can help you, but only if you tell them.

Gaagiizitaagozi, forgiveness means you can move on with peace, joy, and hope.

It allows you to live in gratitude for the gifts you have.

Gaagiizitaagozi improves your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.

It can even lead to compassion and empathy for the one who put you here.

Sometimes the one you need to forgive is yourself.

Forgiveness doesn't always change the one who hurt you, but it will always change you.

If you've hurt someone, be the first to apologize without any excuses.

You both deserve to live lives free from this burden.

As always, remember to call an elder.

They've been waiting for your call.

I'm Dr. Arne Vainio and this is Health Matters.

- If you're a member or are familiar with Indian country, then you know feasts are very important to us and they're a way for us to come together, especially important during COVID times with safety in mind.

- We joined an Ojibwe chef as he prepared a community harvest feast using all ancestral foods from the garden.

(acoustic guitar music) - My name is Vernon Defoe.

I'm from Red Cliff, Wisconsin.

I am Anishinabe and I came up here to help Fond du Lac Farm create a meal with some of the stuff they have in their garden kind of as a way to showcase types of foods that people can cook 'cause a lot of people, you know, they grow the food, but they're not really sure what to do with it or how to cook with it, so that was kind of the goal of this whole thing.

I work for the Indigenous Food Lab and Minneapolis.

It's fairly new.

It's about a little over a year old.

It's a nonprofit group.

But then I also, if people ask me to cook for them and do stuff like this, I've done this kind of work before too.

To me, it's similar just because it's about the community.

It's not a restaurant trying to make a profit.

I also brought up a good friend of mine and an old coworker colleague of mine named Randy Cornelius.

He's been cooking just as long as I have.

Both of us planned this together and worked on it in equal amounts.

The majority of everything was taken from the garden.

There's a couple of things that weren't, the wild rice, but that was grown here and harvested here in Fond du Lac.

Somebody brought some moose meat that we cooked off too and then I brought up the bison meat.

Everybody loves bison, so we did a bison boil, which we did in this gigantic kettle back here overnight, we put like 65 pounds bison in there with just a bunch of vegetables from the garden and let that slow roast overnight.

Then there was a salad that had lettuce from their garden, but also like vegetable tops, so there's like beet tops, carrot tops, there's edible flowers, tomatoes, cabbage.

Then we did the wild rice pilaf with some herbs and onions and garlic, squash.

We did it like a squash medley because they have so many different types of squash in the garden so we just kind of cut them all up and roasted them together so people could kind of get a taste of different types of squash, broccoli and cauliflower blend.

The moose steaks.

We planned for 100 people.

It was a lot of work.

- The Fond du Lac bands Gitigaan Community Garden supports tribal food sovereignty efforts and rebuilds the local food system.

- If you missed a show or want to catch up online, find us at NativeReport.org and follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for behind-the-scenes updates.

And drop a comment on social media if you enjoy the show.

- Thanks for spending time with your friends and neighbors across Indian country.

I'm Rita Karppinen.

- And I'm Ernie Stevens.

We'll see you next time on Native Report.

(gentle native music)