The air was soft with a warm breeze meandering onto the shore of Harbor Bay as Elana Naganashe worked to detangle hundreds of feet of gill net.
Her hands gently sorted from one loop to the next, stretching the plastic mesh along the ground with the help of other tribal citizens, some familiar with the process, others learning from their first experience.
Naganashe, a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, 25, decided to try subsistence gillnet fishing through a program offered by the tribal government’s fisheries and natural resources department. Gillnet fishing for food is a traditional practice deeply rooted in Odawa culture, but Naganashe hadn’t learned about it earlier in her life.
That void of knowledge of traditional practices is something many Indigenous communities struggle against after hundreds of years of government efforts to impose stringent regulations or even outlaw traditional methods of hunting, fishing and gathering.
Naganashe joked that she is not much of a fisherman, and was unaware she was allowed as a tribal citizen to partake in gillnet subsistence fishing. That’s how she found herself sorting net for the first time alongside other LTBB citizens.
“Food sovereignty and treaty rights are important to me, so I am here to learn what it is and why it’s important for us to be doing this,” she said.
It’s an opportunity to reclaim her heritage and to provide her family with fish to eat, she said.
Naganashe said she was nervous, didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t sure if she would even catch any fish. But her time spent learning is about more than fish she might catch, it fulfills her desire to be more involved in her culture and reconnect with traditions.
”It’s especially important that both older and younger tribal members be taught how to be self-sufficient when it comes to obtaining our own food,” she said.
After sorting through the nets, Naganashe and about a dozen tribal citizens alongside with the tribe’s Natural Resources Department worked to carefully place them into large plastic totes without tangles.
Two boats of men, women and a few children then motored into the bay as the sun faded toward the western horizon that May evening. About 100 feet offshore from Harbor Point, the boats slowed and the fishers began cautiously, slowly laying the net into the dark water with guidance from Treaty Rights Specialist for the tribe, Daniel Hinmon.
Naganashe was careful not to get her fingers caught as she guided and stretched the net, tugging to make sure it was tight. The lines would be hauled from the water in the morning, hopefully with a catch of trout, whitefish and salmon.
Her tribal subsistence fishing rights, reserved through treaties with the federal government, are implemented through agreements signed with the State of Michigan. The consent decrees allocate Naganashe and any other tribal member the right to catch up to 100 pounds of fish per day; she is limited to what type of gear and the areas she can fish though. Extensive regulations detail the management under the decree for the different species of fish in the Great Lakes, especially lake trout and white fish. It governs the number of fish that each tribe, commercial and sports fishers can catch, and from where.
The agreement stems from a violent and racist history — a next iteration of a 1985 Consent Decree, an out-of-court settlement following a 1979 federal ruling that reaffirmed tribal rights to fish in the Great Lakes. The latest version was struck in 2000 — a co-management framework for the five Anishinaabek tribes under the 1836 Treaty of Washington, the federal government of and the State of Michigan.
Until 1985, it was illegal for tribal citizens to set gillnets, even though it was negotiated that the signing 1836 treaty would provide tribes the rights to continue traditional practices of hunting, fishing, and gathering on their ancestral homelands and waters. And at that time only three of the five tribes under the agreement were federally recognized. The tribal nations of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians and the Little River Band were not able to exercise their fishing rights until they became federally recognized in 1994.
Kevin Donner, director for the tribe’s Great Lakes Fishery Program said there is a lot of misguided and inaccurate information regarding the consent decree and tribal citizens’ rights to fish in the Great Lakes. He said subsistence fishing shouldn’t be viewed as something new or as a privilege.
“(Tribal fishermen) were risking their lives to feed their families,” he said, adding that fishing isn’t just recreational for Odawa. “It’s spiritual and a representation of a way of life because it’s ancestral, that’s why one of the goals of the LTBB fishery program is to reestablish those connections.”
Donner said he hopes to continue evolving the subsistence fishing program through his work as the tribe adapts to changes in the Great Lakes. He said tribal fishers don’t look at fish as just resources, or something to consume, but every being has a sacredness that influences how it should be managed.
For Naganashe, she understands the importance of subsistence fishing, and reviving her ancestral traditions into her life.
“It’s just really awesome to be out here partaking in traditional fishing my ancestors did historically in these waters,” she said.
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