AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
To mark this year's 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, NPR is bringing you stories from across the country that illustrate American life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for a series we're calling America In Pursuit.
Today's story is set in the Great Lakes when a new pastime was taking hold - sport fishing. And local governments loved it. It meant tourism, wealth and a lot more people using the waters. But there was a problem. Indian communities had long fished those same waters commercially, and tensions were running high between anglers and tribes. Then one fisherman took a stand. Here's Ellie Katz of member station Interlochen Public Radio.
ELLIE KATZ, BYLINE: By the 1980s, the Great Lakes' once-industrial coastlines had become an all-out battleground.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PAUL MULLALY: What is happening in Wisconsin and across the United States is wrong.
KATZ: This is a clip from a 1984 PBS Wisconsin interview with a sportsman named Paul Mullaly, who ran a group opposing native fishing rights.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MULLALY: I am talking about special rights, privileges and laws being granted for and made for a class of people called Indians.
KATZ: To tribal fishermen, it was a simple case of discrimination, and they'd been dealing with it for decades.
JACQUES LEBLANC: Dealing with racism - we dealt with that every way, shape or form.
KATZ: Jacques LeBlanc was a kid in Bay Mills Indian community in the '60s. He used to go out with his dad, who was known as Big Abe, to fish in secret at night on Lake Superior.
J LEBLANC: From our boats getting sunk to tires being slashed to sugar in the gas tanks, to shots fired in the air around us.
KATZ: The situation was dangerous, but fishing was one of the only ways for Native people to make a living in rural Michigan then.
WHITNEY GRAVELLE: One individual had his boat cut free from the dock as a form of harassment.
KATZ: This is Jacques LeBlanc's niece, Whitney Gravelle.
GRAVELLE: And he swam out to try and grab it because when that's how you provide for your family, of course you're going to try and retrieve it, and he ended up drowning in the water trying to get his boat back. So, like, people were dying as this was happening.
KATZ: But something else was happening here and across the country. An Indigenous rights movement was sweeping the nation.
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ROBERT CONLEY: And the Indians believe they are legally right by virtue of a treaty.
LADONNA HARRIS: The sense of identity is coming back.
JOHN TRUDELL: Well, the movement is growing stronger. We're not going to quit.
DON PARISH: We have just much right or more right out there than the sportsmen.
KATZ: Those were the voices of Robert Conley, LaDonna Harris, John Trudell and Don Parish on NPR in 1971. Indian treaties, many signed in the 19th century, were the subject of new legal debates all over the country. Tribes argued they guaranteed the right to hunt and fish. Local governments argued they were out of date. Michigan went a step further and put so many restrictions on commercial fishing that for tribal fishermen, it became nearly impossible. By 1971, the situation reached a boiling point. Whitney Gravelle again.
GRAVELLE: Someone needed to take a stand. Someone needed to defend the treaty right to say, like, hey, not only is this our right, but it's a protected right, and you can't do this to us anymore.
KATZ: So one morning in September, one fisherman volunteered to be the guinea pig. It was Whitney Gravelle's grandfather, Albert "Big Abe" LeBlanc. LeBlanc got ready to go fishing, then made a call to Michigan conservation officers. His son, Sonny LeBlanc, was with him.
SONNY LEBLANC: I just remember him saying that, you know, this is where I'll be, and if you want me, come get me.
KATZ: Big Abe LeBlanc would later tell a Grand Rapids press reporter, quote, "I got into my boat, went out and set some gill nets. I had a copy of the Treaty of 1836 in my pocket. I just sat there and waited," unquote. Big Abe LeBlanc got himself arrested for fishing in his own ancestral waters. It took five years, but in March 1976, the case made it all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. His attorney, Candy Tierney, got to the courthouse early.
CANDY TIERNEY: I knew how many people were coming. I was saying, you know, you're going to need to bring in chairs.
KATZ: People from LeBlanc's tribe, the Bay Mills Indian Community, started to pour in, plus Keweenaw Bay, Saginaw Chippewa, Grand Traverse, Sault Ste. Marie.
TIERNEY: You know, this was their not only economic survival, but their cultural survival that was at stake. I don't think I can exaggerate how important this was to people.
KATZ: Then you had the state side. Tons of people from the DNR and from sport fishermen's groups.
TIERNEY: It ended up being sort of like going to a wedding. Friends and family of the bride are on one side and the groom on the other.
KATZ: Six months later, Tierney's phone rang.
TIERNEY: The Supreme Court clerk called. She just said that, you know, they upheld the decision of the Court of Appeals.
KATZ: Once you said that, you knew it was in your favor?
TIERNEY: Oh, yeah.
KATZ: And what went through your head?
TIERNEY: Hot damn (laughter).
KATZ: Big Abe LeBlanc and hundreds of other Ojibwe and Odawa fishermen won the right to fish throughout huge portions of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Not long after, a federal judge sided with Michigan tribes in another case. Other cases continued through the '80s, and they led to major lasting changes. In Michigan, certain tribes were able to get federal recognition, and newly affirmed fishing rights meant more money in native communities. Cindi John is a commercial fisher and member of the Grand Traverse band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. She remembers how quickly life changed after the federal court decision.
CINDI JOHN: The poverty here was profound. Within a year or two, people were getting bathrooms and running waters in their home, and it was wonderful.
KATZ: Treaty fishing rights are secure now, but there are new problems facing the tribal fishery. The biggest one is lake whitefish. The iconic species is disappearing from most of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. And with it, an important economic and cultural resource is disappearing, too.
JOHN: To me, our whitefish are our buffalo. It's what fed our communities. Without them, that could collapse.
KATZ: But for now, there's still fish to catch. And John's fishing boat, the Linda Sue, sits waiting in the marina.
JOHN: I just love it. It's been one of our biggest blessings in life. And I just can't believe that we have it, and I love to work off it.
KATZ: For NPR News, I'm Ellie Katz in Northern Michigan. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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