Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
A group of Ashland residents rallied Wednesday against Enbridge's use of municipal Lake Superior water for hydrostatic testing of the Line 5 reroute through Bad River ceded territory. The protest adds a local-community dimension to what has largely been framed as a tribal-versus-pipeline fight, and raises a pointed question: who authorized the city to supply water for a project the Bad River Band is actively challenging in federal court? The Wisconsin Examiner's coverage is the most detailed available this week, though WPR's ongoing beat reporting on the reroute remains the essential running record.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
Michigan is accepting public comment on the proposed Line 5 oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, and NARF's updated resource page makes clear what tribal nations and Indigenous communities have long argued: the tunnel project poses direct risks to treaty-protected waters, fisheries, and natural resources. This is the Michigan flank of the same pipeline fight that runs through Mashkiiziibii, and the comment window is a rare moment when organized tribal voice can enter the formal record. NARF is the right source here, and Patty, you may want to flag this for Bad River's legal team if they haven't already.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund has posted a direct call to action: Michigan is currently accepting public comment on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 oil tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, and tribal nations and Indigenous communities have long documented the risks the project poses to the waters, fisheries, and natural resources of the Great Lakes. NARF's framing is clear that this is a treaty-rights issue, not merely an environmental one. For Mashkiiziibii, which has fought the Wisconsin segment of Line 5 through the courts, the Michigan permitting process is the next front. Patty, the comment window will not stay open long.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a jurisdictional challenge to the White Earth Nation's permitting process, in a case that tested whether a tribe or the state holds regulatory authority over water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries. NARF's case review frames this as part of a growing conflict with direct implications for Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, whose ceded-territory water rights face similar pressure from non-Indian landowners. The ruling is a quiet but significant win for tribal water sovereignty, and the legal reasoning will matter to anyone tracking manoomin protection cases.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Governor Evers signed Assembly Bill 98 into law as 2025 Wisconsin Act 222, guaranteeing that Native students who are tribal members, descendants, or eligible for membership may wear traditional regalia at graduation ceremonies across the state. The Oneida Nation's Kalihwisaks covered the milestone with the kind of community-level specificity that mainstream outlets missed. This is the sort of policy win that took years of advocacy by tribal education directors and families who were told, year after year, that a mortarboard was the only acceptable headgear. It belongs in the record alongside Act 31 as a marker of how Wisconsin's relationship with its Native nations continues to evolve.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Eighth Circuit dismissed a challenge to the White Earth Nation's authority to regulate water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries, a ruling that NARF's case review frames as part of a growing conflict between tribal regulatory power and non-Indian landowners. The decision matters well beyond Minnesota: the same jurisdictional question sits underneath Wisconsin Ojibwe water governance disputes, including the ongoing tensions over manoomin protection and sulfide mining near rice waters. NARF's analysis is the right place to read this one.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
A Michigan House committee took testimony on legislation that would create a separate hunting and fishing regulatory authority for the Upper Peninsula, a proposal that tribal nations and treaty-rights advocates are watching closely. The Great Lakes Ojibwe bands have treaty-protected rights that cross the Wisconsin-Michigan border, and any restructuring of state fish and wildlife authority in the UP carries potential consequences for GLIFWC's co-management framework. ICT covered the committee hearing; no vote was taken.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund's reflection on the Katie John Day Supreme Court victory, which secured Alaska Native subsistence fishing rights on federal public lands, is worth reading alongside the White Earth water jurisdiction ruling as a pair. Both cases turn on the same fundamental question: when federal Indian law says tribes have priority, does that hold when states push back? The Alaska answer, after decades of litigation, is yes. The Wisconsin manoomin and treaty-fishing cases are still working toward that same clarity.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Department of Defense reduced its list of recognized religion codes used by military chaplains from more than 200 to just 31, eliminating Native American religion as a named category and folding it into a generic 'other' designation. ICT broke this story, and it deserves to be read by anyone who has watched a Native veteran try to access ceremony in a VA facility or on a military installation. For Patty, whose grandfather Edward DeNomie served in the 32nd Red Arrow Division and whose documentary Way of the Warrior traced the ogichidaa tradition across generations, this is not an abstraction. It is a policy decision that tells Native service members their spiritual practices are not worth naming.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's report on tribal leaders calling for sovereignty as federal support wavers is a useful document of the current moment: the federal government has legal obligations to tribal nations that do not disappear when a new administration decides to cut agency budgets. The piece is careful to distinguish between political discretion and treaty-based legal duty, which is the distinction that matters. Worth keeping as a reference point as the 2027 budget cycle approaches.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
A court decision clearing the way for a foreign mining company to take land sacred to Apache and other Southwest tribes has drawn a pointed analysis from Native News Online: the U.S. remains out of step with international Indigenous rights standards, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when it comes to protecting sacred sites. The Oak Flat case is not a Wisconsin story, but the legal gap it exposes is directly relevant to every Wisconsin nation that has fought to protect ceremonial and culturally significant lands from extractive industry. The source is Native News Online, which Patty has found inconsistent, but this particular piece cites specific legal comparisons worth tracking.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's analysis of the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling finds that Native Americans have lost what one advocate called a 'silent partner' in legislative redistricting fights. South Dakota will not redraw its districts until 2031, but the structural damage is already visible: tribes that relied on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge diluted districts now face a harder road. The ruling's effects will ripple into Wisconsin, where off-reservation Native voters in northern counties have long been underrepresented in state legislative maps.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Donald Warne, a physician and longtime advocate for Native health equity, is leading a feasibility study for an Indigenous School of Medicine in Rapid City with a target opening of 2030. As of 2024, just 0.3 percent of practicing physicians in the United States are Native American. ICT covered this with the institutional detail it requires, and the story is worth watching: a Native medical school would be a landmark institution of the kind that reshapes what the next generation of Native health care looks like.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The second installment of Buffalo Fire's press freedom series looks at Native radio stations as community infrastructure, examining how they can build editorial independence, sustain themselves financially, and serve as information anchors for communities that mainstream media has long ignored or misrepresented. The piece pairs institutional analysis with specific examples of stations that have found ways to stay independent, and it connects to the broader question of what a healthy Native media ecosystem looks like in a moment when federal support for public media is under pressure. Buffalo Fire is doing some of the most careful thinking in Indigenous journalism right now, and this series is worth reading in full. For Patty, whose Tribal Youth Media work has always been premised on the idea that Native communities need to tell their own stories, the question of who controls the infrastructure for that storytelling is not academic.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
Governor Tony Evers signed 2025 Wisconsin Act 222, protecting the right of Native students who are tribal members, descendants, or eligible for membership to wear traditional regalia at graduation ceremonies. The Oneida Nation's Kalihwisaks covered the signing with the kind of specific pride that a press release never captures: this is a law that came from Native communities pushing back against schools that had told students to cover their regalia or leave the stage. It is a small but real act of recognition that Native identity belongs in every room, including the one where diplomas are handed out.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
WPR's Native American coverage profiles Ojibwe filmmaker Alex Nystrom, whose short film explores grief and death through an Indigenous lens. WPR is the right source to lead with here. Nystrom is doing the work that Patty's Tribal Youth Media initiative was designed to make possible: a young Native filmmaker with a camera, a story, and the craft to tell it. The subject matter, grief and death, is not incidental; it is the territory that Indigenous filmmakers return to because it is where community and ceremony and loss all live together.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
A federal judge this week ordered work stopped on sections of Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute in northern Wisconsin, a significant if partial legal victory for the Bad River Band. The ruling keeps the Band's federal lawsuit — which argues the reroute would cross ceded territory without tribal consent — alive and consequential while the broader case proceeds. WPR's coverage, the preferred source here, frames the legal landscape clearly without flattening the sovereignty stakes. This is the same dispute the brief tracked when Bad River asked the court to halt construction outright; the judge's partial halt is the first concrete relief the Band has won.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file a joint 9th-round biennial stipulation in LCO v. Voigt, consolidating and updating six previous filings dating to 2001. Key changes include a tribal fee waiver for state park access in the ceded territory and expanded harvest opportunities. This is the kind of incremental, durable treaty-rights work that rarely makes mainstream news but shapes daily life in the ceded territory for generations. Mazinaigan carries the full picture.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Preliminary studies and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes show that the aquatic herbicide ProcellaCOR causes elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages — the most vulnerable points in the rice's life cycle. Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are pushing back against continued use of the chemical in ceded territory waters. Mazinaigan carries the data; this is the kind of story that will not appear in mainstream Wisconsin media until the damage is done.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Voigt Intertribal Task Force chair and GLIFWC member tribes are formally pushing back against ProcellaCOR applications in regional waterways, citing potential harm to wild rice, fish, and other subsistence resources. This is the advocacy side of the same story as the field data above — the two pieces together show both the scientific concern and the political response. Mazinaigan again.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin water supplies, with private well owners and tribes explicitly among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. This is a water-sovereignty story as much as an environmental one — tribes have been raising PFAS concerns in their water monitoring work for years.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration's unprecedented reorganization of the USDA Forest Service is generating serious concern at GLIFWC, whose member tribes hold off-reservation treaty rights across millions of acres of National Forest land in the ceded territory. Proposed changes could reduce research capacity and interagency coordination that tribes depend on to monitor and defend those rights. Mazinaigan frames this as a structural threat, not a bureaucratic shuffle.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Iron County, with support from GLIFWC and the Bad River and Lac du Flambeau Bands, purchased 1,051 acres of undeveloped shoreline, uplands, and islands on the Gile Flowage from Xcel Energy for permanent conservation and public access. The acquisition protects waters within the ceded territory and keeps the land from development. Mazinaigan carries the story with the tribal conservation framing it deserves.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC in early 2026 after nearly 33 years as director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that included central roles in the Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band litigation and decades of legal and policy victories for the six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands. Mazinaigan's tribute names her specific contributions — the kind of institutional memory that rarely gets acknowledged in mainstream coverage. Her retirement is a genuine transition moment for the organization that has been the operational backbone of Ojibwe treaty rights since the Voigt Decision aftermath.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected approximately 60 million acres of National Forest land — including significant portions of the Ojibwe ceded territory in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan — from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC's Mazinaigan lays out the tribal opposition with the specificity that the issue demands: these are not abstract wilderness acres but the forests where Ojibwe families hunt, gather, and exercise treaty rights that predate the National Forest system itself. The rollback would open ceded territory forests to the same extractive pressures that the Roadless Rule has held at bay for a quarter century, and GLIFWC's formal opposition letter frames it explicitly as a treaty-rights issue. For the third edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin, this is the kind of federal policy shift that belongs in the environmental and treaty-rights sections of every Ojibwe band chapter — the Seventh Generation lens applies directly here.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
A federal judge has ordered a partial stop to construction on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute through the Bad River watershed, the latest turn in a legal fight that Mashkiiziibii has been waging to protect its manoomin beds and treaty-protected waters. The ruling does not halt all work, and the legal landscape remains unsettled, but it is the kind of concrete, court-ordered pause the Band has been pressing for. We tracked Bad River's original motion to stop reroute construction in an earlier issue; this is the follow-on. Watch WPR for updates as the injunction scope becomes clearer.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file a joint 9th-round biennial stipulation with the State of Wisconsin in the long-running Voigt case, modernizing and consolidating six previous filings dating to 2001. Key updates include a fee waiver for tribal members at state parks within the Ceded Territory and expanded harvest opportunities. This is the kind of incremental, durable treaty-rights work that rarely makes headlines but steadily expands what Voigt means in practice for Anishinaabe people living on and off reservation.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribes explicitly named among those eligible for grant funding to address private well contamination. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been found near tribal communities. The intersection of water quality, treaty-protected resources, and tribal sovereignty makes this more than a general environmental story.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Iron County, with support from GLIFWC, the Bad River Band, and the Lac du Flambeau Band, purchased 1,051 acres of undeveloped shoreline, uplands, and islands on the Gile Flowage from Xcel Energy for permanent conservation and public access. The acquisition protects habitat within the Ceded Territory and keeps the land out of private development. This is the kind of quiet, durable land protection work that rarely generates a press release but matters enormously to the communities whose treaty rights depend on intact landscapes.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are escalating their opposition to ProcellaCOR, an aquatic herbicide being used in Ceded Territory lakes, citing preliminary studies showing elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating leaf stages. Voigt Intertribal Task Force Chair is quoted directly in Mazinaigan's coverage, which also notes field data from 14 Wisconsin lakes suggesting harm to wild rice beds. The Seventh Generation question here is not abstract: manoomin is both a treaty-protected resource and a living relative, and the data is pointing in a troubling direction.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The Trump administration's proposed reorganization of the USDA Forest Service has GLIFWC and its member tribes worried about impacts on treaty rights enforcement and research capacity in the Ojibwe Ceded Territory. Proposed changes include consolidating or eliminating regional offices that have historically coordinated with tribal governments on harvest management and habitat monitoring. Mazinaigan reports that GLIFWC is treating this as a serious institutional threat, not a bureaucratic reshuffling.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
St. Croix Band spearfishers launched onto three lakes on April 10, registering the first 390 walleyes of the 2026 season, near the historical average. Mazinaigan notes that long-term GLIFWC data shows open-water spearfishing has remained within sustainable bounds, a quiet counter-narrative to the crisis framing that has historically surrounded Ojibwe off-reservation harvest. High water from snowmelt and rain slowed the eastern Ceded Territory season, while western Upper Michigan saw a productive stretch between rain events.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The current federal administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected roughly 60 million acres of National Forest land from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC and its member tribes have formally opposed the rollback, arguing that roadless areas within the Ceded Territory are integral to the wild rice, fisheries, and gathering resources that treaty rights guarantee. The connection to sulfide mining risk in northern Wisconsin is direct.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC in March 2026 after nearly 33 years as director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that included central roles in landmark legal and policy victories for the Wisconsin Ojibwe bands. Mazinaigan's retirement profile traces her work on the Minnesota water quality standards case, the Voigt stipulation process, and years of federal budget advocacy in Washington. She is the kind of person whose name does not appear in mainstream coverage but whose institutional knowledge and legal skill shaped the treaty-rights landscape that the Ojibwe chapter describes. Her retirement is a genuine transition moment for GLIFWC.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
A Bayfield County federal judge issued a partial stop on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute construction, a significant if incomplete win for Bad River and allied opponents of the pipeline. The ruling does not halt all work, leaving the Band's broader motion still before the court. WPR's coverage explains which segments are paused and what legal thresholds remain. This is the story to watch as the summer construction season opens.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion asking the court to extend the partial halt into a full construction stop, arguing that any reroute work through the ceded territory threatens treaty-protected resources and the Band's sovereign interests. The motion follows the partial injunction and signals that Mashkiiziibii is not settling for half measures. This is the piece to pair with the partial-halt ruling above.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's explainer maps the procedural steps between the current partial halt and a full construction stop, walking through the injunction standards, the appeals risk, and the timeline pressures Enbridge is using to its advantage. It is the clearest single-source guide to where the litigation stands and what Bad River needs to prove next. Worth keeping close as the court calendar moves.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Ashland County Board approved an agreement under which the county will be compensated for law enforcement costs incurred while policing protests of Enbridge's Line 5 reroute. The arrangement raises the pointed question of who, ultimately, is paying to police opposition to a private pipeline project on contested ceded territory. WPR's reporting is the right source here.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Bad River Tribal Governing Board voted to create a formal Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives task force and designated May 5 as the Band's Tribal Day of Awareness, joining a growing number of Wisconsin nations formalizing their MMIW commitments in tribal law. The Wisconsin Examiner covered the vote, which took place in the same week as the national MMIP day of awareness. This is the kind of governance action that belongs in the Bad River section of the Ojibwe chapter.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan reports that the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are escalating their opposition to ProcellaCOR, an aquatic herbicide used in Ceded Territory lakes, citing preliminary data showing elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages. The Voigt Intertribal Task Force is involved, and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes is raising red flags. This is a manoomin-protection story that sits squarely in Patty's treaty-rights and wild-rice beats.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Governor Evers signed legislation directing $125 million to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribal communities explicitly included among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. The funding is meaningful but the contamination problem it addresses is not going away.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file the ninth round of biennial stipulations with the State of Wisconsin in the Voigt case, modernizing and consolidating six previous filings since 2001. Key updates include a tribal fee waiver for state park access and expanded harvest opportunities across the Ceded Territory. Mazinaigan has the details, and this is the kind of incremental-but-consequential legal housekeeping that the Ojibwe chapter needs to track.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's interview with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader makes the case that the priorities of the Ojibwe bands and their neighbors are distinct from the rest of the state, organized around treaty rights, manoomin, and the particular ecology of the Northwoods rather than the policy concerns that dominate Madison and Milwaukee. The framing, 'north of Highway 29 is its own country,' is a useful shorthand for what Patty's Ojibwe chapter has always argued. Lead with the tribal voice here.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan reports that the St. Croix Band launched the Ziigwan 2026 spearfishing opener on April 10, registering the first 390 walleyes of the season, while high water from snowmelt slowed some eastern Ceded Territory operations. Long-term GLIFWC data shows that open-water spearfishing remains well within sustainable harvest levels. The season is a living expression of treaty rights that the Voigt Decision made possible.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Trump administration's proposed reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service is generating serious concern at GLIFWC, whose member tribes depend on Forest Service infrastructure for research, treaty-resource monitoring, and intergovernmental coordination across the Ceded Territory. Proposed changes could eliminate or consolidate regional offices that have been key partners in Voigt-era treaty implementation. Mazinaigan has the story.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC after nearly 33 years as the agency's director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that spanned the Minnesota v. Mille Lacs litigation, the Voigt biennial stipulations, and dozens of other legal and policy battles that defined what the 1837 and 1842 treaties mean in practice. Mazinaigan's tribute names her role in specific cases and credits her with building the interagency relationships that made GLIFWC effective as more than a monitoring body. She is the kind of person Patty's journalism ethic calls us to name specifically.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan's feature on the 2026 maple sugarbush season in the Ceded Territory is the kind of story Patty's journalism ethics were built to honor: specific people, a specific place, a specific practice, and the quiet transmission of knowledge across generations. The season was marked by cooler temperatures and ideal sap-flow conditions, with a fourth-grade class from Hayward visiting Pat Eaten's sugarbush to learn the work firsthand. The iskigamizigan, the sugar camp, is not a relic; it is a living institution that connects Ojibwe families to the land, to each other, and to the seasonal rhythms that mino-bimaadiziwin requires. This is the kind of piece that belongs in the brief not because there is a crisis but because there is joy, and because the joy is the story. It is also a window into the TEK-and-climate conversation Patty has been tracking since Ice Worlds: what happens to the sugarbush as winters shorten and sap-flow windows shift? The 2026 season was good. The question is how many more like it remain.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Bad River Band's governing board voted this week to formally recognize May 5 as a Tribal Day of Awareness for missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives, and authorized the creation of a new tribal task force to address the crisis. The Wisconsin Examiner covered the vote, though the story would benefit from a direct quote from a Bad River council member or advocate. This is a meaningful institutional step: a task force with a home community mandate carries more weight than a state-level working group, and it grounds the national MMIW conversation in the specific geography and kinship networks of Mashkiiziibii.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion in federal court this week seeking to halt construction on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through Ashland and Iron counties, arguing the project should not proceed while the tribe's underlying easement lawsuit remains unresolved. WPR's Native American coverage has the story, though the tribal filing itself is the document worth tracking down. This is the central legal front in a fight that has defined Bad River's public life for years, and the motion signals the band is not prepared to let construction create facts on the ground while the courts deliberate.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Ashland County approved an agreement this week that would provide county reimbursement for law enforcement costs associated with policing protests of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute project. WPR reported the development without specifying who funds the reimbursement, which is the question worth pressing. The arrangement has a familiar and troubling shape: public safety resources aligned with a private pipeline company's construction timeline, in the homeland of the very tribe whose treaty rights are at the center of the dispute.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Wisconsin's tribal nations and commercial gambling interests are at odds over a state legislative proposal to legalize online sports betting, with tribes arguing the bill would undercut the exclusivity provisions in their gaming compacts. WPR has been tracking this story, which sits at the intersection of sovereignty, economic development, and the state's long-standing compact relationships with tribal governments. The compacts were hard-won; any erosion of exclusivity has real fiscal consequences for nations whose governmental programs depend on gaming revenue.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR's explainer this week lays out the procedural terrain for Bad River's emergency motion to stop Enbridge construction, walking through the Bayfield County court proceedings and the federal case running in parallel. It is a useful primer, though it would be stronger with more direct tribal voice. The core tension the piece surfaces is real: construction is advancing on the ground while the legal question of whether the reroute can proceed at all remains genuinely open.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR's conversation with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader this week surfaced the persistent frustration that state and federal policy is made by people who rarely travel north of Highway 29, let alone understand what treaty-protected resources mean to communities whose livelihoods and spiritual lives depend on them. The framing is one Patty, you will recognize from your own fieldwork: the geography of neglect is not accidental. The piece is worth reading alongside the Line 5 and fishing-restriction stories as a reminder of the political context in which those legal fights unfold.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR profiles an Ojibwe jingle dress dancer who is using digital platforms to extend a family tradition of activism, connecting the physical practice of dance to contemporary forms of Indigenous visibility and resistance. The story is exactly the kind of 'Native People Up Close' framing Patty's textbook calls for: a specific person, a specific practice, a specific lineage, no vanishing-race framing in sight. The jingle dress itself carries a healing origin story from the flu pandemic era, which gives the digital extension of that tradition an additional layer of resonance.
Background
· 2026
· Wisconsin Examiner
On April 22, 2026, the Bad River Tribal Council voted to formalize May 5 as a Bad River Tribal Day of Awareness for missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives and authorized the creation of a tribal task force. Gina Jensen, who represents the tribe's police commission, noted that the murder rate for Indigenous women is ten times the national average. More than fifty community members walked the annual MMIW/R route inside the reservation that week, the route marked by red dresses on garden stakes.
Background
· 2025
· poynter
On April 22, 2025, Mary Annette Pember of Red Cliff released Medicine River with Pantheon, weaving her mother Bernice Rabideaux's experience as a five-year-old at St. Mary's Catholic Indian Boarding School in Odanah with archival research on the federal boarding school system. St. Mary's operated on the Bad River reservation from 1883 to 1969 under the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who have since begun a Truth and Healing process that included a repatriation ceremony with the Bad River Tribe.
Background
· 2024
· bad-river-film
Mary Mazzio's documentary Bad River opened in March 2024, narrated by Quannah ChasingHorse and Edward Norton and produced by Grant Hill and Allison Abner. The film chronicles the Bad River Band's fight against Enbridge Line 5 inside the longer arc of settler colonialism, the Catholic church's boarding school role, and corporate land use. It won the Environmental Media Association's Best Documentary and earned three Critics' Choice nominations.
Background
· 2023
· midwest-environmental-justice-network
On June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Bad River reservation by June 2026 and to pay the Band $5.1 million for nine years of trespass, with continuing quarterly payments. The court found the pipeline a 'public nuisance' carrying an imminent threat of rupture that could contaminate the Band's drinking water and the manoomin sloughs. It was the first U.S. court order to shut down a major operating oil pipeline on tribal land.
Background
· 2023
· WPR Native American coverage
On January 25, 2023, the six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands marked 40 years since the Voigt Decision, the 1983 federal appeals court ruling that reaffirmed treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather on ceded territory under the 1837 and 1842 treaties. Voigt is the legal foundation under every subsequent treaty case in Wisconsin, from the spear fishing battles of the 1980s to the wolf hunt lawsuits to the Line 5 trespass ruling. Northwoods tribal leaders reflected on the violence the original ruling provoked at the boat landings and on what has been built since.
Background
· 2022
· indigenous-climate-resilience-network
Research across the Great Lakes region has confirmed that manoomin is now declining roughly 5 to 7 percent annually due to drastic precipitation shifts and rising temperatures, and the species has been deemed the most vulnerable food throughout Anishinaabeg territories. The Bad River sloughs, which hold the largest remaining coastal wild rice bed on the Great Lakes, face accelerating heat, lake-level fluctuation, and algal blooms. Tribal nations are leading restoration grounded in Traditional Ecological Knowledge while agencies belatedly learn from elders.
Background
· 2021
· red-cliff
In 2021 Red Cliff received a $900,000 grant from the federal Administration for Native Americans to create a three-year Ojibwemowin Teaching and Training Program in partnership with the Bayfield School District, the Midwest Indigenous Immersion Network, and the Bad River Band. Dustin 'Gimiwan' Burnette of MIIN, who began as a Bad River adult language instructor in 2020, anchors the curriculum. Bad River Head Start now produces and publishes immersion-classroom books written by language trainees about people and places in Bad River.
Background
· 2021
· doe-indian-energy
In May 2021 the Bad River Band completed Ishkonige Nawadide, a 500-kilowatt solar array paired with more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours of battery storage powering the Health and Wellness Center, the wastewater treatment plant, and the Chief Blackbird Administration Building. The project was a direct response to the July 2016 flood that knocked out power across the reservation for days and damaged critical infrastructure. Funded through the Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy.
Background
· 2021
· WPR Native American coverage
Joe Rose, known by his Ojibwe name Moka'ang Giizis (Rising Sun), walked on February 23, 2021, at age 85 from complications of COVID-19. A Bad River tribal elder and Northland College emeritus professor, Rose was a part of virtually every significant environmental and treaty-rights struggle the North Country faced for half a century. He died during the brutal February wolf hunt he had spent decades resisting as a lifelong wolf advocate. Patty called him a second dad.
Background
· 2015
· ICT (Indian Country Today)
On March 24, 2015, Gogebic Taconite president Bill Williams pulled the company's preapplication for the 4.5-mile open-pit iron mine that would have produced eight million tons of taconite annually over the Bad River watershed. Six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, led by Bad River, had organized the EPA review and grassroots resistance that surfaced the wetlands the company claimed did not exist. Williams cited 'unexpected extensive wetlands' and EPA permit uncertainty.
Background
· 2014
· wisconsin-academy
Patty followed Indian Nations of Wisconsin with Native People of Wisconsin (2003), a social studies text for younger readers, and Seventh Generation Earth Ethics (2014), profiles of twelve Indigenous Wisconsin stewards including Joe Rose, Dot Davids, and Walter Bresette, which won the Midwest Book Award for Culture. Her PBS documentary Way of the Warrior aired nationally in 2007 and 2011, drawing on her grandfather Edward DeNomie's WWI service with the 32nd Red Arrow Division. The decade between INW editions produced the body of work the third edition now sits alongside.
Background
· 2013
· oil-and-water-dont-mix
In June 2013 the Bad River Tribal Council voted against renewing the 20-year easements that had allowed Enbridge's Line 5 to cross 12 allotment parcels on the reservation. The decision came three years after Enbridge's Line 6B ruptured into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, dumping more than 843,000 gallons of crude. That no vote became the foundation of every Line 5 ruling that followed.
Background
· 2012
· ramsar
On February 2, 2012, the Kakagon and Bad River Sloughs received Ramsar designation as a Wetland of International Importance, the first such site owned by a tribal nation in the United States. The 16,000-acre complex holds the largest natural wild rice bed on the Great Lakes and the last extensive coastal manoomin bed in the region, critical to the genetic diversity of Lake Superior wild rice. Designation came after years of stewardship work with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association and partners.