Book

Disputed waters: Native Americans and the Great Lakes fishery

University Press of Kentucky • Lexington, Ky. • Published In 1990 • Pages:

By: Doherty, Robert.

Abstract

This book is mostly an account of a twelve-year dispute between Michigan's Ojibwas (Ottawa and Chippewa bands) and the state of Michigan over fishing rights in the Great Lakes. The state of Michigan represented the sports fishing industry which had replaced the earlier fur, lumber, and commercial fishing industries as northern Michigan's major industry. In 1966, the government began to stock fish in the Great Lakes watershed in response to the ecological devastation wrought by lampreys and alewives to the fisheries. This was the beginning of a booming sports fishing industry catering to middle class whites. Local Ojibwas who continued to fish commercially were soon in a fish allocation struggle with the sports fishermen. A resulting court case recognized their aboriginal rights to fishing. An intensely political struggle followed that attempted to impose state rights over the fisheries. An arrangement was finally made out of court that allocated fishing by zones, in which weaker parties such as white commercial fishermen and small-boat Ojibwa fishermen lost out. Except for the first two chapters there is little here on actual Ojibwa traditional or contemporary culture outside of fishing.

HRAF PubDate

2000

Region

North America

Sub Region

Arctic and Subarctic

Document Type

Book

Evaluation

Creator Type

Unknown

Document Rating

4: Excellent Secondary Data

5: Excellent Primary Data

Analyst

Ian Skoggard ; 1998

Field Date

1980-1989

Coverage Date

1966-1989

Coverage Place

Twentieth Century Ojibwa, Michigan, United States

Notes

Robert Doherty

Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-168) and index

LCCN

90039198

LCSH

Ojibwa Indians