Keweenaw Bay Research Articles

Restoring human and more-than-human relations in toxic riskscapes: “in perpetuity” within Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Sand Point

Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Bay is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa and their relatives. It is also a toxic riskscape: Its waters, shorelines, and fish beings are polluted by an unknown tonnage of legacy mining waste rock called “stamp sands,” which contain unsafe levels of toxic compounds. This paper describes Ojibwa stewardship principles and reciprocal obligations, illustrating First Treaty With Gichi-Manitou practices of restoring relations within a toxic riskscape. Defined here, riskscapes are places and spaces where pollution/toxicity relations are continually reconfigured in literal, symbolic, and systemic ways. We share a story from Keweenaw Bay’s Sand Point restoration project (2002–present) to elucidate distinctly different approaches and challenges to restoring ecological relationships, including those between human and more-than-human beings. The restoration of 35 acres of barren shoreline into a thriving landscape concurrently created space for reclaiming Ojibwa stewardship obligations to land, water, and life. The goal was to restore Sand Point as a self-sustaining plant community, but maintenance remains demanding and costly. Lake Superior forces continually mobilize stamp sands, and recent extreme storm events have done so with even greater force. Thus measures of “success” are reconsidered annually, a reminder that “in perpetuity” toxic governance regimes are as unstable as riskscapes themselves. Yet Sand Point is a story of hope. Substantial transformations atop the surface reflect the restoration of many relationships between communities, institutional partners, and more-than-human beings. It is our Sand Point plant relatives who share the most valuable lessons of restoring sustainable livelihoods: resilience is inter-dependent communities caring for one another.

Distributions of Cisco (Coregonus artedi) in the upper Great Lakes in the mid-twentieth century, when populations were in decline.

The restoration of the once abundant Cisco (Coregonus artedi) is a management interest across the Laurentian Great Lakes. To inform the restoration, we (1) described historical distributions of Cisco and (2) explored whether non-indigenous Rainbow Smelt (Osmerus mordax) and Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) played a role in the decline of Cisco populations across the upper Great Lakes (i.e., Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron). Our source data were collected from fishery-independent surveys conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's research vessel R/V Cisco in 1952-1962. By analyzing data collected by gill-net surveys, we confirmed the importance of embayment and shallow-water habitats to Cisco. We found that Cisco was abundant in Whitefish Bay and Keweenaw Bay, Lake Superior, and in Green Bay, Lake Michigan, but we also found a sign of Cisco extirpation in Saginaw Bay, Lake Huron. Our results also showed that Ciscoes generally stayed in waters <80 m in bottom depth throughout the year. However, a substantial number of Ciscoes stayed in very deep waters (>150 m in bottom depth) in summer and fall in Lake Michigan, although we cannot exclude the possibility that these Ciscoes had hybridized with the other Coregonus species. By comparing complementary data collected from bottom-trawl surveys, we concluded that the spatiotemporal overlap between Rainbow Smelt and Cisco likely occurred across the upper Great Lakes throughout 1952-1962. These data were consistent with the hypothesis that Rainbow Smelt played a role in the decline of Cisco populations across the upper Great Lakes in the period. We also found that the spatiotemporal overlap between Alewife and Cisco likely occurred only in Saginaw Bay in fall 1956 and in Lake Michigan after 1960. Thus, any potential recovery of Cisco after the 1950s could have been inhibited by Alewife in Lakes Michigan and Huron.

Seasons of research with/by/as the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community

In response to generations of inequitable research to/for Indigenous communities, many have and are developing research practices that center Indigenous priorities. In this paper, we share the Seasons of Research framework developed by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and University collaborators. First, we outline the scholarship that provides the foundations for research and being researchers in Keweenaw Bay. This section includes a comprehensive table that summarizes resources for building, strengthening, and sustaining equitable research partnerships with/by/as Indigenous communities. Next, we share the guidance for research partnerships we created together that uses the Medicine Wheel to illustrate an interconnected system of partnership teachings. The guidance aims for balance between and among four seasons of research: relationship building, planning and prioritization, knowledge exchange, and synthesis and application. Research partnerships with/by/as the Community demonstrate respect for each other's differences, honor reciprocity in actions, exemplify responsibility for differing commitments, and express reverence for shared lands, waters, and living beings. Personal reflections by lead author Emily Shaw are shared to demonstrate the process and practices associated with seasons of research, bridging Indigenous wisdom, social and natural sciences, and environmental engineering. We conclude with a few words on the transformation of the research landscape with Indigenous peoples at home and abroad.

Health Risk from Toxic Metals in Wild Rice Grown in Copper Mining-Impacted Sediments

Northern wild rice is of great dietary and cultural importance to the Native American population in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Millions of tons of mine tailings were discharged into Lake Superior and other inland lakes during the copper mining boom in the early 20th century in this area. This includes L’Anse Bay, located within the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) reservation. Since wild rice restoration is being encouraged by the KBIC, we investigated the distribution of toxic metals in sediments, water, and wild rice and their potential impact on human health from two locations. Sand Point sloughs on L’Anse Bay and a nearby inland lake, Lake Plumbago, were sampled for sediment, water, and wild rice, and the potential human health risk from dietary exposure to toxic metals in wild rice was assessed. Arsenic stood out as the element that had the highest bioaccumulation at both locations. Risk calculations showed that the hazard index (HI) value for wild rice seeds from both sites was high. Data indicate both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks for As from wild rice in Sand Point sloughs and Lake Plumbago, and carcinogenic risks for Cd and Cr at Lake Plumbago.

Coastal Remote Sensing: Merging Physical, Chemical, and Biological Data as Tailings Drift onto Buffalo Reef, Lake Superior

On the Keweenaw Peninsula of Lake Superior, two stamp mills (Mohawk and Wolverine) discharged 22.7 million metric tonnes (MMT) of tailings (1901–1932) into the coastal zone off the town of Gay. Migrating along the shoreline, ca. 10 MMT of the tailings dammed stream and river outlets, encroached upon wetlands, and contaminated recreational beaches. A nearly equal amount of tailings moved across bay benthic environments into critical commercial fish spawning and rearing grounds. In the middle of the bay, Buffalo Reef is important for commercial and recreational lake trout and lake whitefish production (ca. 32% of the commercial catch in Keweenaw Bay, 22% along southern Lake Superior). Aerial photographs (1938–2016) and five LiDAR and multispectral over-flights (2008–2016) emphasize: (1) the enormous amounts of tailings moving along the beach; and (2) the bathymetric complexities of an equal amount migrating underwater across the shelf. However, remote sensing studies encounter numerous specific challenges in coastal environments. Here, we utilize a combination of elevation data (LiDAR digital elevation/bathymetry models) and in situ studies to generate a series of physical, chemical, and biological geospatial maps. The maps are designed to help assess the impacts of historical mining on Buffalo Reef. Underwater, sand mixtures have complicated multispectral bottom reflectance substrate classifications. An alternative approach, in situ simple particle classification, keying off distinct sand end members: (1) allows calculation of tailings (stamp sand) percentages; (2) aids indirect and direct assays of copper concentrations; and (3) permits determinations of density effects on benthic macro-invertebrates. The geospatial mapping shows how tailings are moving onto Buffalo Reef, the copper concentrations associated with the tailings, and how both strongly influence the density of benthic communities, providing an excellent example for the International Maritime Organization on how mining may influence coastal reefs. We demonstrate that when large amounts of mine tailings are discharged into coastal environments, temporal and spatial impacts are progressive, and strongly influence resident organisms. Next steps are to utilize a combination of hi-resolution LiDAR and sonar surveys, a fish-monitoring array, and neural network analysis to characterize the geometry of cobble fields where fish are successful or unsuccessful at producing young.

Copper-rich “Halo” off Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula and how Mass Mill tailings dispersed onto tribal lands

Over a century ago, shoreline copper mills sluiced more than 64 million metric tonnes of tailings into Lake Superior, creating a “halo” around the Keweenaw Peninsula with a buried copper peak. Here we examine how tailings from one of the smaller mills (Mass Mill, 1902–1919) spread as a dual pulse across southern Keweenaw Bay and onto tribal L’Anse Indian Reservation lands. The fine (“slime clay”) fraction dispersed early and widely, whereas the coarse fraction (stamp sands) moved more slowly southward as a black sand beach deposit, leaving scattered residual patches. Beach stamp sands followed the path of sand eroding from Jacobsville Sandstone bluffs, mixing with natural sands and eventually adding onto Sand Point, at the mouth of L’Anse Bay. Dated sediment cores and a multi-elemental analysis of the buried Cu-rich peak in L’Anse Bay confirm a tailings origin. Copper concentrations are declining in the bay, yet copper fluxes remain elevated. The spatial and temporal studies underscore that enhanced sediment and copper fluxes around the Keweenaw Peninsula largely reflect historic mining releases. Mercury is correlated with copper, yet mercury concentrations and fluxes remain relatively low in Keweenaw Bay compared to nearby Superfund sites (Torch and Portage Lakes), perhaps reflecting the absence of smelters on Keweenaw Bay. Tribal efforts to remediate contamination are progressing, but are hindered by recent high water levels plus severe storms. The long-term repercussions of Mass Mill discharges caution against mine companies discharging even small amounts of tailings into coastal environments.

Walleye Ogaawag Spearing in the Portage Waterway, Michigan: Integrating Mixed Methodology for Insight on an Important Tribal Fishery

AbstractThe Portage Waterway in Michigan's Upper Peninsula supports traditional Anishnaabe walleye (or ogaawag in the Anishnaabe language) spear‐harvesting for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC). Through reserved Indian treaty fishing rights, KBIC is highly involved in the waterway's stewardship and annual community spear‐harvest. Tribal leadership and fisheries personnel have long documented that annual harvests are far below sustainable quotas. The objectives of this research were to 1) understand the values and concerns of KBIC tribal members on Anishnaabe walleye (ogaawag) spear‐harvesting, 2) examine water temperature patterns during the spring 2018 harvest to seek insight on how harvests may be optimized, and 3) integrate Anishinaabe gikendaasowin or traditional knowledge with science and education. We conducted an online survey in February 2018, containing 27 questions, to gain preliminary insight on KBIC's perspectives of the annual walleye (ogaawag) spear‐harvest. Nearly all respondents highly value the spear‐harvest tradition personally and on behalf of the community. Similarly, nearly all agreed that it is important for the KBIC to manage its own fishery resources, and that the Tribe's Natural Resources Department effectively does so. Respondents also expressed concerns about factors that could impact their harvests, including environmental changes and confrontations with non‐Native residents. From May 1 to May 19, 2018, we deployed 13 Onset HOBO Pro V2 temperature dataloggers across the Portage Waterway to measure spring warming patterns in locations popular for spear‐fishing. This period encompassed the entire KBIC spear‐harvest season, with dataloggers recording water temperature every two hours. Temperature data show that management of the harvest season may need revision, as embayments and sloughs where spear‐fishing largely occurs warmed significantly earlier than other parts of the waterway. As the presence of walleye (ogaawag) in shallow waters depends on temperature, some parts of the waterway should be opened for harvesting earlier. Our findings will be prepared in a formal recommendation for KBIC leadership in efforts to increase harvests for the Tribal community that rely on walleye (ogaawag) as a sacred and traditional food source.

Lidar (light detection and ranging) and benthic invertebrate investigations: Migrating tailings threaten Buffalo Reef in Lake Superior

The low turbidity of northern Great Lakes waters allows lidar sufficient penetration to greatly aid environmental studies of coastal environments. On the Keweenaw Peninsula of Lake Superior, Big Traverse Bay provides an excellent example of mine tailings spreading from an old coastal release site. Between 1901 and 1932, two stamp mills (Mohawk and Wolverine) discharged 22.7 million metric tonnes of tailings (stamp sands) off the town of Gay. Along beaches, migrating stamp sands have dammed stream outlets, encroached upon wetlands, and contaminated recreational beaches. The tailings are now threatening benthic environments and critical commercial fish breeding grounds. Buffalo Reef is important for commercial and recreational lake trout and lake whitefish production (32% of the commercial catch in Keweenaw Bay, 22% of southern Lake Superior). Aerial photographs and five lidar over-flights emphasize: 1) the enormous amounts of stamp sands moving along the shoreline, and 2) large amounts migrating underwater across the bay towards Buffalo Reef. Differences between 2008 and 2016 lidar over-flights are used to quantify underwater stamp sand movement. For years, tailings have accumulated in an ancient riverbed cut (“trough”) just north of Buffalo Reef. Stamp sand overflow out of the “trough” is now moving into Buffalo Reef cobble fields, where fish drop eggs. Ponar sediment studies quantify % stamp sand in sand mixtures around Buffalo Reef, copper concentrations, and quantify impacts on benthic invertebrate taxa. Our study emphasizes that when large amounts of mine tailings are discharged into coastal environments, temporal and spatial impacts are progressive, threatening benthic organisms and fish.

Coastal Ecosystem Investigations with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and Bottom Reflectance: Lake Superior Reef Threatened by Migrating Tailings

Where light penetration is excellent, the combination of LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) and passive bottom reflectance (multispectral, hyperspectral) greatly aids environmental studies. Over a century ago, two stamp mills (Mohawk and Wolverine) released 22.7 million metric tons of copper-rich tailings into Grand Traverse Bay (Lake Superior). The tailings are crushed basalt, with low albedo and spectral signatures different from natural bedrock (Jacobsville Sandstone) and bedrock-derived quartz sands. Multiple Lidar (CHARTS and CZMIL) over-flights between 2008–2016—complemented by ground-truth (Ponar sediment sampling, ROV photography) and passive bottom reflectance studies (3-band NAIP; 13-band Sentinal-2 orbital satellite; 48 and 288-band CASI)—clarified shoreline and underwater details of tailings migrations. Underwater, the tailings are moving onto Buffalo Reef, a major breeding site important for commercial and recreational lake trout and lake whitefish production (32% of the commercial catch in Keweenaw Bay, 22% in southern Lake Superior). If nothing is done, LiDAR-assisted hydrodynamic modeling predicts 60% tailings cover of Buffalo Reef within 10 years. Bottom reflectance studies confirmed stamp sand encroachment into cobble beds in shallow (0-5m) water but had difficulties in deeper waters (&gt;8 m). Two substrate end-members (sand particles) showed extensive mixing but were handled by CASI hyperspectral imaging. Bottom reflectance studies suggested 25-35% tailings cover of Buffalo Reef, comparable to estimates from independent counts of mixed sand particles (ca. 35% cover of Buffalo Reef by &gt;20% stamp sand mixtures).

Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula ed. by Ronald Riekki

Reviewed by: Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula ed. by Ronald Riekki Amy D. Richards Ronald Riekki, ed., Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 2015. 282 pp. $24.95. It is fitting that I am writing this review here, in the Peter White Public Library in Marquette, the unofficial capital city of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I grew up here, but education led me away and has only managed to return me to the shores of Lake Superior during academic breaks. Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is a collection of previously published poems, short stories, and excerpts from novels written by women about this particularly northern place. The writers, their lives spanning over three centuries, include women who are native to the land because their nineteenth century Finnish, Italian, Cornish, or German ancestors migrated to mining settlements here, and women of Ojibwa ancestry who are native to the land still longer. The writers include women who make sacred annual pilgrimages to the homes of grandparents, the places their own mothers or fathers left for a more prosperous lower peninsula. The writers include women transplanted here by the universities or simply because they are seduced such as Elinor Benedict who announces “white birches and blue waters have taken me.” All of these women have found something here, [End Page 101] and the result is an evocative, humorous, despairing, sobering, and renewing collection of literature. The selections in this book are eclectic, not simply because they include several genres including two pieces of juvenile fiction one of which is historical fiction set in revolutionary America, but primarily because the works were first published between 1839 and 2013 with the majority written in this century and the end of the last. There are a few selections from the middle of the twentieth century and a 1904 excerpt from Carroll Watson Rankin’s Dandelion Cottage, a childhood favorite of mine. The work reaches back into the beginning of the nineteenth century with the inclusion of the poetry of BAME-WA-WA-GE-ZHIK-AQUAY (1800–1842), also known as Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, one of the first Native American writers. Because of the early writings, the work provides an anthology of women’s voices, but I am left wondering if there are other middle to late nineteenth century voices that might have been included. What I think this book does best is illustrate the paradoxical push and pull of the Upper Peninsula (UP). The pull is the attraction to the natural for spiritual and physical healing, and the refreshing experience to be in a distinctive place not homogenized like much of America. But, with the magnetic pull north comes the polar push from one’s native land and its alcohol and methamphetamine abuse, spousal abuse, family lies and secrets, poverty, cold, isolation, and unemployment or under-employment. In the foreword, Alison Swan, award winning poet and environmentalist, writes that between June and September “everything from mosquitoes to white pines has to complete the year’s growth and reproduction.” In these stories, the authors show what it means to survive in the UP, but stories of thriving and flourishing are few, and this rings true to life. Nature provides succor in these writings. The trees, the lakes (especially Lake Superior), the rivers, the ethereal Northern Lights all minister to the primarily female narrators. Poet Stellanova Osborn writes, “When I carry/The woes of the world/Into the woods/Branches reach out/And brush them gently off.” Water offers absolution and restoration as in several of the poems where bodies of water are evocative of female bodies. The power of water heals the women from sexual abuse. Most of the authors imagine Lake Superior as “she,” and she is very powerful and empowering. One of my favorite lines of the collection is from contemporary poet Catie Rosemurgy’s [End Page 102] “Lake Superior Confesses to the Shore of Keweenaw Bay” when the lake says of the balsam fir and the northern white pine that, “They think they are all the needles/ever lost in haystacks.” Lake Superior goes on to confess that, “I...

Power and politics in research design and practice: Opening up space for social equity in interdisciplinary, multi-jurisdictional and community-based research

Working collaboratively with communities is commonly considered a cornerstone of good practice in research involving social-ecological concerns. Increasingly, funding agencies also recognise that such collaborations are most productive when community partners have some influence on the design and implementation of the projects that benefit from their participation. However, researchers engaged with this work often struggle to actively engage community members in this way and, in particular, Indigenous peoples. In this article, we argue that useful strategies for facilitating such engagement are to leave space in the research plan for questions of interest to community partners and to encourage equitable interactions between all participants through the use of forums in which power dynamics are intentionally flattened. We demonstrate the use of this technique in an interdisciplinary, multi-jurisdictional research study involving the fate and transport of toxic compounds that lead to fish consumption advisories throughout the world. In this project, the use of participatory forums resulted in community partners in Michigan’s Keweenaw Bay area of Lake Superior shaping a key aspect of the research by raising the simple but significant question: ‘When can we eat the fish?’. Their interest in this question also helped to ensure that they would remain meaningful partners throughout the duration of the project. The conclusion emphasises that further integration of Indigenous and community-based research methods has the potential to significantly enhance the process and value of university-community research engagement in the future.

“Our Hope and Our Protection”: &lt;em&gt;Misko-biiwaabik&lt;/em&gt; (Copper) and Tribal Sovereignty in Michigan

"Our Hope and Our Protection"Misko-biiwaabik (Copper) and Tribal Sovereignty in Michigan Erik M. Redix (bio) In 2000 the Smithsonian denied the request of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula to repatriate a three-thousand-pound copper boulder that was removed from the shores of Upper Michigan's Ontonagon River in 1843. The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) consists of two historic bands of the Lake Superior Ojibwe: the L'Anse and Ontonagon bands. KBIC argued that the boulder was a sacred object utilized for purification by practitioners of Ojibwe Midewiwin prior to beginning ceremonies. The Smithsonian ruled that KBIC failed to provide evidence that the boulder was a sacred object as defined by the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) as it was not utilized directly in ceremonies.1 NAGPRA was passed primarily to return human remains to Native communities. It is important to remember that the legislation only applies to publicly funded institutions. Despite this, the legislation has been relatively effective in the repatriation of human remains. However, the burden of proof for repatriation lies with tribes, not the institution housing the object. This has resulted in contestations over what constitutes "sacred" objects under NAGPRA, which defines them as "specific ceremonial objects which are needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religions by their present-dayadherents."2 If the federal government was truly committed to decolonization and tribal sovereignty, the burden would fall on the federal government to prove why it should keep objects when a tribe petitioned for repatriation; the tribe would then review the federal request. The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and other tribes are sovereign nations and should be vested [End Page 224] with the right to determine what should be returned to them. Linguistic evidence demonstrates that the Ojibwe viewed the Ontonagon boulder as a living being, which bolsters both the moral and specific legislative reasons why it should be returned. However, the Ontonagon boulder is not just an object in a discussion of tribal sovereignty. Many sources suggest that Ojibwe leaders saw the boulder as a source of their sovereignty. In the nineteenth century, leaders of the Ontonagon band consistently articulated to American officials that they saw copper as an important aspect of their sovereignty, calling it "our hope and our protection." From its removal from Michigan in 1843 to the denial of the Smithsonian to repatriate it in 2000, the Ontonagon boulder tells an important story of how the Ojibwe experienced colonialism. Removal was central to American colonialism. It was not just people who were removed, but objects and resources were also separated from tribal homelands. During the time of the removal of the boulder, Ontonagon band leaders knew that what threatened Ojibwe sovereignty most was American desire for copper, not land. Most Ojibwe people were not directly evicted from their lands by white settlement during the era of treaty making. Instead, American desire to exploit Ojibwe resources such as copper posed the greatest threat to Ojibwe sovereignty during this time. While there was not widespread white settlement in Ojibwe territory in the decades following land cession treaties, the resources exploited in the region were critical for American expansion across the continent. Historian David R. Wrone argues: They provided several of the essential ingredients for the industrial transformation of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century America. The ores of the Mesabi enabled the steel mills of Pittsburgh to flourish, the copper of the Keewnanh [sic] poured into wires made the telephone system possible. Power sites created paper mills, part of the industrial glory of Wisconsin. The lakes and fish offered a recreational paradise.3 Exploration of Upper Michigan's copper preceded and fueled American attempts to extend control over the lands of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. In the decades immediately following the Civil War, three-fourths of all copper produced in the United States came from Upper Michigan during an era when the United States produced half the world's copper. It all started with the removal of the Ontonagon boulder. [End Page 225] the ontonagon band and copper The Ontonagon band was one of the...

Ojibwe Gichigami (“Ojibwa’s Great Sea”): an intersecting history of treaty rights, tribal fish harvesting, and toxic risk in Keweenaw Bay, United States

Ojibwe Gichigami (“Ojibwa’s Great Sea”) is the spirit name for Lake Superior; it is also the homeland of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) where Gichigami fishing has sustained the people for nearly a millennia. As signatories to the 1842 Treaty With The Chippewa, the KBIC retain rights for hunting, fishing, and gathering, and worship within ten-million acres of ceded land and water territory. However, due to elevated levels of toxics such as methyl-mercury and polychlorinated-biphenyls (PCBs), Lake Superior is currently under numerous fish consumption advisories that inform the public of harmful contamination levels. Thus, harvesting provides socio-cultural and spiritual wellbeing for the KBIC, and simultaneously, places their physical health at great risk. By using ethnographic methods and oral histories, this article illustrates how an intersecting history of KBIC treaty rights, tribal fish harvesting, and toxic risk is the center of their water story. Over the course of several decades, they have encountered dire consequences due to federal assimilation policies, state regulatory control over their harvesting, and environmental degradation and contamination. KBIC present-day perspectives of toxic risk are rooted in this history. In 1971, the Michigan Supreme Court presented a landmark decision: the People v. Jondreau reaffirmed 1842 treaty rights for the KBIC. This precedential decision was followed by Great Lakes states issuing the nation’s first fish advisories. The KBIC historical context is imperative to understanding present day environmental policy and its relevance (or irrelevance) for those most at-risk, emphasizing how social injustices are manifested through a people’s water history.

Indigenous water histories I: recovering oral histories, interpreting Indigenous perspectives, and revealing hybrid waterscapes

This special issue attempts to shed new light on salient but neglected aspects of water history, “Indigenous water histories.” In this first of two journal issues dedicated to this topic, we present five articles that are pertinent to three themes that Water History has not entirely or substantially dealt with before: the use of oral history, the interpretation of indigenous perspectives, and the emphasis on the hybrid/divergent aspects of waterscapes. Readers, however, will see that these new themes are largely complementary to the most popular topics this journal has explored before, such as the histories of reclamation projects, water distribution, management, pollution, and politics. Geographically, this collection offers a broad coverage of Indigenous water issues by encompassing cases from the United States (U.S.), Mesoamerica, eastern Timor Leste, and northern and western Australia. Valoree S. Gagnon traces the changes and continuity of Ojibwe Gichigami (Ojibwa’s Great Sea) water narratives and fishing rights among the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Michigan, the U.S. Teresa Cavazos Cohn and her coauthors discuss changes in riparian plants and landscapes in the Wind River watershed of Wyoming, the U.S., and the implications of these changes for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. The focus of these two articles on water history germane to fish and plants should be new for readers of Water History.

Analysis of MABEL Bathymetry in Keweenaw Bay and Implications for ICESat-2 ATLAS

In 2018, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is scheduled to launch the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), with a new six-beam, green-wavelength, photon-counting lidar system, Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS). The primary objectives of the ICESat-2 mission are to measure ice-sheet elevations, sea-ice thickness, and global biomass. However, if bathymetry can be reliably retrieved from ATLAS data, this could assist in addressing a key data need in many coastal and inland water body areas, including areas that are poorly-mapped and/or difficult to access. Additionally, ATLAS-derived bathymetry could be used to constrain bathymetry derived from complementary data, such as passive, multispectral imagery and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). As an important first step in evaluating the ability to map bathymetry from ATLAS, this study involves a detailed assessment of bathymetry from the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar (MABEL), NASA’s airborne ICESat-2 simulator, flown on the Earth Resources 2 (ER-2) high-altitude aircraft. An interactive, web interface, MABEL Viewer, was developed and used to identify bottom returns in Keweenaw Bay, Lake Superior. After applying corrections for refraction and channel-specific elevation biases, MABEL bathymetry was compared against National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data acquired two years earlier. The results indicate that MABEL reliably detected bathymetry in depths of up to 8 m, with a root mean square (RMS) difference of 0.7 m, with respect to the reference data. Additionally, a version of the lidar equation was developed for predicting bottom-return signal levels in MABEL and tested using the Keweenaw Bay data. Future work will entail extending these results to ATLAS, as the technical specifications of the sensor become available.

Prolonging Disaster (Un)recovery: “Culturally‐Irrelevant” Fish Consumption Advisories in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community

AbstractThe United States responded to the 1971 international mercury crisis by establishing fish consumption advisories, which were intended to warn the American public of temporary mercury contamination in fish. However, advisories remain implemented as public health protection measures in all fifty states. This perpetual reliance on advisories is prolonging disaster recovery, or more precisely, ensuring a continuous state of what I term “disaster (un)recovery.” Modified approaches create “eat safe fish” guidance for fishers, producing “culturally‐relevant” recommendations. This means advisories offer a number of “healthy” choices that correspond to specific bodies of water and fish species favored by varying target populations. This article explores fish advisory policy in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), a federally‐recognized Indian tribe that retains treaty‐established homelands and harvesting rights in the Lake Superior region. By using ethnographic and oral history methods, I examined fish harvest practices in an effort to create culturally‐relevant fish advisory recommendations for the community. However, my analysis reveals the cultural irrelevance of advisories as health protection measures for the KBIC. Examining cultural considerations within KBIC harvesting and in the development of fish advisories illustrates how the notion of “culture” actually leads to increased toxic exposure. The KBIC rely on fish for social and spiritual wellbeing, which simultaneously places their physical health at great risk. I argue that advisory policy as public health protection is primarily a social justice issue, and conclude by identifying pathways for culturally‐specific recovery.

Disturbance and Wetland Type Alter Reed Canarygrass Cover in Northern Michigan

AbstractAlthough much is known about the physiological capabilities of reed canarygrass (RCG) and the consequences of invasion, less is known about the roles that wetland type and surrounding disturbances play in facilitating the spread of RCG in predominantly forested landscapes. Therefore, the goals of our study were to test if (1) certain wetland types in the Northern Great Lakes region were more susceptible to RCG invasion, (2) certain disturbances facilitated RCG, and (3) the level of road development and the presence or absence of a ditch bordering each observed road influences the frequency of adjacent RCG populations. We randomly selected 28 wetlands within the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community reservation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. At each wetland, we collected plant community and environmental data and catalogued disturbances. In all, 287 plant species were identified. Cluster analysis revealed 16 distinct vegetation communities, which were distributed among three broader wetland community types: (1) nonforested graminoid, (2) Sphagnum peatlands, and (3) forested wetlands. Occurrence of RCG was most common in the nonforested graminoid communities and was also positively correlated to disturbance. The most frequent disturbances were roads, off-road vehicle trails, and logging activity. Additionally, paved and graded roads, and roads with ditches, were more likely to have RCG alongside them than unpaved dirt roads. Our data suggest that RCG occurrence is controlled by interactions between wetland types and disturbance.

Using LiDAR to reconstruct the history of a coastal environment influenced by legacy mining

LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data can be used to create fine digital elevation and bathymetric models (DEMs). Here we examine natural coastal erosion in Grand Traverse Bay, Michigan, a part of Keweenaw Bay in Lake Superior, and discuss how a variety of geological features (submersed river bed and channels associated with the Houghton Low; Nipissing dunes) interact with long-term sediment accumulation patterns. The geological features also modify migrating tailings from a legacy mining site. The combination of LiDAR derived images and aerial photographs allowed us to reconstruct the historical movement of tailings along the coastline. A total of 22.8million metric tonnes (Mt) of stamp sand were discharged into the coastal environment off Gay, MI. Over a span of 80years, beaches to the southwest of Gay have progressively received 7.0Mt (30.7%) of the mass eroded from the original pile, whereas 11.1Mt (48.7%) have moved into the bay. The total amount accumulated along the beaches now greatly exceeds the mass remaining on the original tailings pile (3.7Mt; 16.2%). Bathymetric differences between two LiDAR surveys (2008 and 2010) were also used to estimate the mass, and to track the movement of migrating underwater stamp sand bars. These bars are moving southwesterly towards Buffalo Reef, creating a threat to the lake trout and lake whitefish breeding ground.

The Effects of Per Capita Tribal Payments on the Fertility, Education, and Labor Force Participation of Tribal Members

The purpose of this research is to provide a preliminary examination of the effects of per capita tribal payments on the decision making of tribal members. Standard microeconomic theory suggests that unearned income changes the labor-leisure tradeoff in utility maximization models. While the results of per capita payments on hours of work can be easily anticipated, the effects of these payments on human capital accumulation and family size are more ambiguous. Using Census data from 1990 and 2000 we shed some light on the impact of these per capita tribal payments on the lives of the recipients. We concentrate on three tribes in the state of Michigan: the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians of Michigan. The results lend support to the basic labor theory conclusion that an increase in nonlabor income causes individuals to decrease their work efforts. There is also weak evidence that the payment of per capita payments from casino profits is increasing the fertility rate of Saginaw Chippewa tribal families.

Light-absorbing components in Lake Superior

Features of light absorption are critical to optical aspects of water quality and in regulating the signal available for remote sensing. Spectral characteristics and spatial patterns of light-absorbing components, and their relationships with optically active constituents, are documented for the Sturgeon River, Keweenaw Bay, and Lake Superior based on analyses of samples collected on two cruises (2006 and 2007, 20 sites). The absorption coefficient, a (m−1), is partitioned according to the additive components (ax) of colored dissolved organic matter (aCDOM), non-algal particles (aNAP), phytoplankton (aϕ), and water itself (aw; known). The role of minerogenic particles and their iron content in regulating aNAP is evaluated based on paired measurements by an individual particle analysis technique (Peng et al., 2009), through empirical analyses and Mie theory calculations of absorption by these particles (am). Spectral characteristics of aNAP and aϕ were consistent with those reported for other case 2 (i.e., phytoplankton not dominant) systems. However, the slope values that describe aCDOM spectra for the bay and the lake were unusually low, suggesting an atypical composition for the lake's CDOM. The dominant absorbing component in the blue wavelengths was CDOM, representing ≥75% of a at a wavelength of 440nm at all sites in the 2006 survey. A general gradient in both aCDOM and aNAP extended from the Sturgeon River, through the bay, into eastern Lake Superior in that survey. Relationships between ax and optically active constituents were within the broad ranges reported for other case 2 systems. Minerogenic particles, related to their iron content, are demonstrated to be an important component of aNAP.