The violent racism centered around tribal fishers’ use of gill nets, despite the fact the nets had been used by Anishinaabek since long before the settlement of European colonizers. The nets had been declared illegal by the state of Michigan.
Harassment toward Native Americans spiked through the 1980s, when non-Natives publicly protested against Indigenous fishing rights throughout the Great Lakes region including in neighboring states — Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
A 1979 federal court ruling reaffirmed Anishinaabek rights to fish in the Great Lakes; which means tribal citizens aren’t governed by the same state regulations as non-Native anglers.
In the decades since that ruling, state and federally recognized tribes have co-managed fish and wildlife with state and federal agencies. But that violent history left a legacy through an anti-treaty sentiment that still lingers with some fishermen in the Great Lakes Basin…