Walleye warriors and white identities: Native Americans’ treaty rights, composite identities and social movements

Abstract

During the late 1980s and early 1990s white supremacist vigilantes attacked Native American spear fishers attempting to exercise treaty rights in northern Wisconsin. Nearly a decade later, Native Americans organized a coalition that included some of their former white supremacist enemies to stop plans by transnational corporations to pursue environmentally harmful resource exploitation enterprises in the region. Native Americans and their allies had to respond to corporate promoted ‘new right’ white identities to defend themselves in the spearfishing struggle by creating new counter-hegemonic racial identities for their enemies and themselves. Their experiences show how regressive and progressive racial identities become formed through struggle and how struggles over racial identities can help generate a broader movement for social justice.