Walleye Warriors
The Chippewa treaty rights story
Revised edition, 2000
Walleye Warriors tells the story of how an alliance of concerned people helped defuse violent confrontations against the Chippewa of northern Wisconsin. It is an important addition to the literature on treaty rights, civil rights, environmental protection, and sustainable economic development.
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From the Introduction: WALLEYE WARRIORS
By Walt Bresette
AN OBSCURE COURT RULING in early 1983 in favor of the Lake Superior Chippewa, a Woodland Native nation in the upper Great Lakes, turned into a violent struggle against Chippewa people and their exercise of off-reservation harvesting rights.This treaty rights battle garnered national and international attention, with the media focusing on the racism and conflict of sports versus subsistence fishing. This is the story behind that media event that began on January 25, 1983. Beyond the headlines and symptoms of the problems, we offer a perspective on the social, political, economic and environmental earthquake that hit Wisconsin in the 1980s. It is a story of various groups responding, sometimes violently, to the court ruling and of new people responding to that violence. It is a tale of fear, political denial, and the attempted looting of Chippewa rights and northern Wisconsins resources. It is a tale of vile and violent racism and of official plundering of law, with a near "old west" mentality overtaking Wisconsin. And it is a tale that speaks of other violence, other stories, other similar forces, where people and earth are victimized.
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$25.00 / paperback / 290 pages / 6 in. (w) by 9 in. (h)
Tongues of Green Fire Press / Writers Publishing Cooperative / 1994 /
ISBN 10: 1-930149-00-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-930149-00-7
Rick Whaley has blended parenting, political activism and writing, and a career in education for more than three decades. He has been a day care teacher, parent, family day care provider, foster parent, and home-schooler. In the Rust Belt layoffs of the early 1980s, Whaley organized in Milwaukee around disinvestment and forced overtime, as well as doing neighborhood organizing and safety patrols. He was an organizer and activist for the boat-landing Witness for Non-Violence in northern Wisconsin and co-authored the award-winning book, Walleye Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Rights Story. He was spokesperson for Milwaukee Area Greens for most of the 1990s. Mr. Whaley currently serves on the steering committee for the Sacred Sites Run 2006 and 2007. He grandparents now, works with his block club, and makes a living as a paraprofessional at a public Montessori school in Milwaukee.
