Lac Du Flambeau Research Articles

Evaluating pharmaceuticals and other organic contaminants in the Lac du Flambeau Chain of Lakes using risk-based screening techniques.

In an investigation of pharmaceutical contamination in the Lac du Flambeau Chain of Lakes (hereafter referred to as "the Chain"), few contaminants were detected; only eight pharmaceuticals and one pesticide were identified among the 110 pharmaceuticals and other organic contaminants monitored in surface water samples. This study, conducted in cooperation with the Lac du Flambeau Tribe's Water Resource Program, investigated these organic contaminants and potential biological effects in channels connecting lakes throughout the Chain, including the Moss Lake Outlet site, adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant lagoon. Of the 6 sites monitored and 24 samples analyzed, sample concentrations and contaminant detection frequencies were greatest at the Moss Lake Outlet site; however, the concentrations and detection frequencies of this study were comparable to other pharmaceutical investigations in basins with similar characteristics. Because established water-quality benchmarks do not exist for the pharmaceuticals detected in this study, alternative screening-level water-quality benchmarks, developed using two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toxicological resources (ToxCast database and ECOTOX knowledgebase), were used to estimate potential biological effects associated with the observed contaminant concentrations. Two contaminants (caffeine and thiabendazole) exceeded the prioritization threshold according to ToxCast alternative benchmarks, and four contaminants (acetaminophen, atrazine, caffeine, and carbamazepine) exceeded the prioritization threshold according to ECOTOX alternative benchmarks. Atrazine, an herbicide, was the most frequently detected contaminant (79% of samples), and it exhibited the strongest potential for biological effects due to its high estimated potency. Insufficient toxicological information within ToxCast and ECOTOX for gabapentin and methocarbamol (which had the two greatest concentrations in this study) precluded alternative benchmark development. This data gap presents unknown potential environmental impacts. Future research examining the biological effects elicited by these two contaminants as well as the others detected in this study would further elucidate the ecological relevance of the water chemistry results generated though this investigation.

Gambling with our health: smoke-free policy would not reduce tribal casino patronage.

Tribal sovereignty exempts tribal casinos from statewide smoking bans. To conduct a tribally-led assessment to identify the characteristics of casino patrons at Lake of the Torches Resort Casino in Lac du Flambeau WI and their preferences for a smoke-free casino. A survey was administered from April to August 2011 to a stratified random sample of 957 members of the casino players club to assess their preferences for a smoke-free casino. These members were categorized into three groups: those who reported being likely to (1) visit more; (2) visit less; or (3) visit the same if the casino prohibited smoking. They were characterized by age, education, sex, race/ethnicity, annual income, players club level, and reasons for visiting the casino. Statistical analyses were conducted on weighted data in October to December 2011. Weighted logistic regression was calculated to control for potential confounding of patron characteristics. Of the 957 surveyed patrons, 520 (54%) patrons were likely to visit more; 173 (18%) patrons to visit less; and 264 (28%) patrons were indifferent to the smoke-free status. Patrons more likely to prefer a smoke-free casino tended to be white, elderly, middle class and above, and visit the casino restaurants. Patrons within the lower tiers of the players club, almost half of the players club members, also showed a higher preference for a smoke-free casino. This tribal casino would likely realize increased patronage associated with smoke-free status while also contributing to improved health for casino workers and patrons.

Hunting and Morality as Elements of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Contemporary subsistence hunting practices of North American Indians have been questioned because of hunters’ use of modern technologies and integration of wage-based and subsistence livelihoods. Tribal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has been questioned on similar grounds and used as justification for ignoring tribal perspectives on critical natural resource conservation and development issues. This paper examines hunting on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in North Central Wisconsin, USA. The study used semi-structured interviews with hunters from the reservation to document their contemporary hunting practices and the traditional moral code that informs their hunting-related behaviors and judgments. Subsistence hunting is framed in the context of TEK and attention focused on the interplay between TEK’s practical and moral dimensions. Results indicate the importance of traditional moral codes in guiding a community’s contemporary hunting practices and the inseparability and interdependence of epistemological, practical, and ethical dimensions of TEK.

Development of yellow perch ( Perca flavescens) broodstocks: Initial characterization of growth and quality traits following grow-out of different stocks

Broodstocks of yellow perch ( Perca flavescens) were initiated from fertilized gametes obtained from wild fish taken from the Perquimans River (North Carolina), Choptank River (Maryland), Lake Winnebago (Wisconsin) and Lac du Flambeau (Wisconsin). Populations at these sites were chosen based on the results of a prior population genetics study of perch populations from the upper Midwest and East Coast (Grzybowski et al., 2010. Tr. Am. Fish. Soc. 139, 270–287). Criteria included drainage basins, overall genetic diversity, inbreeding coefficient, and the logistics of obtaining and crossing wild perch at each location. Fertilized gametes of all four stocks were reared under identical early life stage rearing conditions. Of the four stocks, Lac du Flambeau fish did not survive feed habituation. Progeny from the other three stocks were evaluated in a growth trial consisting of four replicate tanks per stock reared under identical conditions until one-year post hatch. Perquimans River and Choptank River fish did not differ in absolute growth rate (AGR), and both achieved an AGR 2.5 times as great as the Lake Winnebago fish. Average weights differed significantly between all stocks by the end of the growth trial with Perquimans River being the heaviest and Lake Winnebago the lightest. When each stock reached an average of 28 g, individuals were assigned to one of four size classes and the overall family contribution to each specific size class was determined by completing parentage analysis using microsatellites on a subset of individuals. Deviations from expected frequencies based on stocking proportions were observed in all stocks, suggesting a genetic link to growth and the ability to increase growth using selection. At the end of the growth trial, 40 individuals per stock were filleted for fillet yield and proximate analysis. No differences were observed in fillet yield, lipid, protein or moisture content. Significant differences were seen in arachidonic and eicosapentaenoic acid levels. The differences between stocks in growth suggest that the Perquimans River and Choptank River stocks would outperform the Lake Winnebago stock in intensive aquaculture environments. However, there may be other phenotypes such as disease resistance that are not evident from the growth trial in other stocks such as Lake Winnebago. The inability of Lac du Flambeau fish to survive early life stage rearing would indicate that these fish are not good candidates for broodstock development using the husbandry approaches employed in the current study.

Hunting and Morality as Elements of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Contemporary subsistence hunting practices of North American Indians have been questioned because of hunters’ use of modern technologies and integration of wage-based and subsistence livelihoods. Tribal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has been questioned on similar grounds and used as justification for ignoring tribal perspectives on critical natural resource conservation and development issues. This paper examines hunting on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in North Central Wisconsin, USA. The study used semi-structured interviews with hunters from the reservation to document their contemporary hunting practices and the traditional moral code that informs their hunting-related behaviors and judgments. Subsistence hunting is framed in the context of TEK and attention focused on the interplay between TEK’s practical and moral dimensions. Results indicate the importance of traditional moral codes in guiding a community’s contemporary hunting practices and the inseparability and interdependence of epistemological, practical, and ethical dimensions of TEK.

Tribal and state ecosystem management regimes influence forest regeneration

Wild ungulates such as white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus) are highly valued wildlife assets that provide subsistence, economic and cultural benefits to hunters and rural communities. Yet, high density populations of these herbivores can contribute significantly to regeneration failures in a wide range of forest types. Pre-European settlement white-tailed deer densities were estimated to have been approximately 2–4 deer km −2, and similar densities have been recommended to balance contemporary forest regeneration and wildlife objectives. We studied northern red oak ( Quercus rubra L.) regeneration on neighboring tribal and state forests where socio-cultural differences have led to distinct hunting management practices and subsequent differences in wildlife-plant interactions. Tribes such as the Lac du Flambeau Chippewa have kept deer populations relatively low on reservation lands through active hunting practices. We used an observational study approach to compare in situ ungulate herbivory under low (2–3 deer km −2) and high (>10 deer km −2) population densities. We measured northern red oak regeneration on tribal and state forests in two management unit types: contiguous stands of oak >15 ha in area and small residual “pockets” of oak <3 ha left by foresters as a source of seed and wildlife mast. Herbivory levels were significantly higher on state forests than tribal forests and were closely correlated with the density of larger seedlings, particularly in oak pockets. If herbivory levels are too high, even with adequate light, our results suggest that seedlings may not survive in densities sufficient to maintain northern red oak as a co-dominant species in mixed forests. However, when deer densities are kept at 2–4 deer km −2, our results suggest that northern red oak seedlings can survive beyond browseable heights in sufficient numbers for maintaining oak. Tribal lands can provide contemporary examples of longstanding low to intermediate deer densities and sustainable deer–forest relationships.

New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations

Part One. Perspectives: On the Genealogy and Legacy of an Anthropological Tradition 1. Keeping the Faith: A Legacy of Native American Ethnography, Ethnohistory, and Psychology - Regna Darnell 2. Fields of Dreams: Revisiting A. I. Hallowell and the Berens River Ojibwe - Jennifer S. H. Brown 3. Framing the Anomalous: Stoneclad, Sequoyah, and Cherokee Ethnoliteracy - Margaret Bender Part Two. Cultures: On Persons and Power, Rituals and Creativity 4. Power as the Transmission of Culture - Greg Urban 5. Ironies of Articulating Continuity at Lac du Flambeau - Larry Nesper 6. The Poetics of Tropes and Dreams in Arapaho Ghost Dance Songs - Jeffrey D. Anderson 7. Night Thoughts and Night Sweats, Ethnohistory and Ethnohumor: The Quaker Shaker Meets the Lakota Sweat Lodge - Raymond A. Bucko, S.J. 8. Self-consciousness, Ceremonialism, and the Problem of the Present in the Anthropology of Native North America - Robert E. Moore Part Three. Histories: On Varieties of Temporal Experience and Historical Representation 9. Native Authorship in Northwestern California - Thomas Buckley 10. The Sioux at the Time of European Contact: An Ethnohistorical Problem - Raymond DeMallie 11. Proto-Ethnologists in North America - Mary Druke Becker 12. Folklore, Personal Narratives, and Ethno-Ethnohistory - Joseph C. Jastrzembski 13. Events and Nonevents on the Tlingit/Russian/American Colonial Frontier, 1802-1879 - Sergei A. Kan 14. Time and the Individual in Native North America - David W. Dinwoodie Part Four. Representations: On Selves and Others, Hybridities and Appropriations 15. Culture and Culture Theory in Native North America - Robert Brightman 16. Cannibals in the Mountains: Washoe Teratology and the Donner Party - Barrik Van Winkle 17. Vanishing Indians in Nineteenth-Century New England: Local Historians' Erasure of Still-Present Indian Peoples - Jean M. O'Brien 18. Pocahontas: An Exercise in Mythmaking and Marketing - Frederic W. Gleach 19. I'm an Old Cowhand on the Banks of the Seine: Representations of Indians and Le Far West in Parisian Commercial Culture - Michael E. Harkin 20. To Light the Fire of Our Desire: Primitivism in the Camp Fire Girls - Pauline Turner Strong

Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture Renate Eigenbrod G.G. Valaskakis . Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture. Wilfred Laurier University Press. 2005. x, 293. $28.95 Indian Country consists of a collection of essays on topics that include resistance movements, treaty rights, and land claims as well as powwow traditions, the significance of the drum (and ways of researching it), the repatriation of artifacts and images, and Native women. Throughout her analysis of negotiations in Native communities (urban and reserve, [End Page 169] Canada and United States) of 'different – even opposing – discourses of emerging cultural and political possibility' Valaskakis emphasizes 'the enduring sensibility of being Indian.' She positions herself as 'insider-outsider': as a Chippewa (otherwise known as Ojibway or Anisnabe) of mixed ancestry, she and her brother grew up in Lac du Flambeau in Wisconsin, becoming 'living boundaries between the city and the reserve, the Chippewa and the outsider.' She sees herself as 'allied to Indian Country and a mix of border zones, academic, urban, and social.' This view of her own positionality shapes her epistemological vantage point and creates an intriguing and insightful account of 'interrelated realities: individual and collective, past and present, Indian and Other.' Her explorations, written in the 'adopted' vocabulary of cultural studies, draw the reader into a continuous movement of interpretations; closures are constructed as contingent since Native 'communities are not cemented in unity and belonging, but in a dynamic process of change and difference' – a continuum erased by the discourse of museum collections and the media, which prefer to dissolve contradictions inherent to lived experiences. In the chapter 'Rights and Warriors: Media Memories and Oka,' for example, Valaskakis illustrates her methodological approach 'grounded in historical experience and current practice' by 'reading' the different re-presentations of Indian warriors from their role of allies in colonial wars, to protectors of their own people, to their demonization in resistance movements like AIM and Oka, to gangs in urban centres. She concludes, 'The media dissolved the difference between warriors who were protecting Indian land from an invasion of the police, the army, or business, and warriors who were barricading the Mercier Bridge between Kahnawake and Montreal.' It is this 'social imaginary of the monolithic warrior,' she further argues, that attracts unemployed Native youth, turning them onto the wrong warrior path and, as the dominant narrative, highlights militancy but does not allow newcomers 'to identify Native people as owners and occupants of North American land.' The re-appropriation of the warrior image in Native discourses today is one example of the 'web of representations' in which Natives and newcomers are bound together. Valaskakis illustrates her emphasis on multiple representations of Native realities in the image of the book cover, which shows a photograph of her great-grandmother Margaret Gauthier who gave her ceremonial dress to the Smithsonian Museum in the late 1920s. The photo is multiplied as four images reflecting on each other, with a faint mirrored image, mysteriously allusive, in the background. Considering the author's critical analysis of research that centres on so-called artifacts as 'representations of power' rather than 'agents of power' (as she explains in the chapter on the significance [End Page 170] of her father's Midé water drum), this image on the front cover featuring her great-grandmother's ceremonial dress is revealing. It reflects upon her methodology throughout in that it validates the lived experience of her ancestor whose individual story was considered unimportant while she was alive ('No one asked who she was') while it deconstructs a unitary notion of Native identity so much part of the colonial imaginary. Having read Valaskakis's book, researchers in 'Indian Country' will never again consider Native people and their articulations 'transparent' but will extend their research into composite methods of 'interpreting practice, decoding silence, and reconstructing absence' – only to arrive at '"truths" [that] are ... changeable and ambiguous.' Renate Eigenbrod Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba Copyright © 2008 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Grants Encourage States to Develop Substance-Abuse Prevention Projects

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Government NewsFull AccessGrants Encourage States to Develop Substance-Abuse Prevention ProjectsBill PritchardBill PritchardSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:17 Nov 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.41.22.0012aThe Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has announced 16 Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) State Incentive Grants totaling $145 million over five years to enhance community-based substance abuse and mental health programs.The grants, awarded to states and Indian tribes, are designed to help community programs reduce drug and alcohol abuse, lower crime related to substance abuse, increase employment and school enrollment, improve family and living conditions, and boost access to services. The money enables state-community partnerships to implement initiatives that in other settings have been effective in promoting youth development, reducing risk-taking behaviors, and preventing problem behaviors, according to the agency.The total funding for 2006 is $29 million. The individual grants can go up to $2.1 million in the first year and are renewable for up to five years, subject to availability of funds and the progress achieved by awardees, according to SAMHSA.A grant of $513,831 was awarded to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa of Peshawbestown, Mich., to develop programs to prevent the onset and reduce the progression of substance abuse, including childhood and underage drinking. The state of utah was awarded $2.1 million to develop a statewide, integrated, data-driven, substance abuse prevention system.Pennsylvania, another awardee, plans to use its $2.1 million grant to build an interagency substance abuse prevention coalition and a standardized reporting system based on the principles of a strategic prevention framework.“Substance abuse prevention, just like the prevention of obesity or smoking, involves work by families and schools, faith organizations and health professionals, corrections officials and youth leaders,” Assistant Surgeon General Eric Broderick, D.D.S., M.P.H., acting deputy administrator of SAMHSA, said in the press release.“Funding streams from multiple sources can come together to build a comprehensive approach to prevention that spans organizations and individuals at the local and state levels. The grants... help achieve both of those goals.”Although the direct recipients of the SAMHSA's SPF incentive grants will be states and federally recognized tribes and tribal organizations, the agency foresees the grants' being implemented in partnerships with local communities.Besides Pennsylvania and Utah, states receiving $2.1 million grants are Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. The Cherokee Nation of Tahlequah, Okla., also received a $2.1 million award.Smaller amounts went to the Cook Inlet Tribe Council in Anchorage, Alaska ($1.63 million); Native-American Health Center in Oakland, Calif. ($1.45 million); American Samoa ($1.31 million); and the Great Lakes Intertribal Council in Lac du Flambeau, Wis. ($1.1 million).Information about SAMHSA's SPF incentive grant program is posted at<www.samhsa.gov/Matrix/matrix_prevention.aspx>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Celebrating the Indian Way of Life

The day of opening ceremonies at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC dawned beautiful and cloudless. Little did I know that it would also turn out to be a life-changing experience. My friend Joan Staples (White Earth Chippewa) and I boarded the DC Metro system in our jingle dresses around 7 A.M. to head down to the Smithsonian Castle, which was near the staging area for the Native Nations Procession. We made quite a commotion with our dresses in the subway, where we had our first experience being photographed by someone's cell phone. We made even more of an impression when we later entered the Fine Art Museum in search of a restroom. We didn't realize we would have to first get past the metal detectors, which created quite a spectacle, given that we were each wearing about four hundred pieces of metal on our dresses. The primary mood surrounding opening ceremonies was that of celebration. Never before had so many people representing so many different Indigenous nations come together in the nation's capital. Indigenous peoples from North and South America exchanged smiles, photographic moments, and cultural acknowledgement of one another's beauty, pride, and the strength that lifted up our people, despite centuries of colonization and oppression. Many of us can rejoice in the fact that today we can still identify tribal people by their particular regalia, dances, and songs, proving that many survived the assimilation policies of governments. The spirit of the people had not been vanquished. There was something to be celebrated in understanding that today's surviving Indigenous people are the descendants of the strongest of the strong and that they have not only survived [End Page 505] but in many instances have learned how to adapt and thrive while continuing to maintain the essence of what it is to be an Indigenous person in this world. As renowned Maori artist Darcy Nicholas says, "I can never be my ancestor, and at the same time, he could never be me. Yet, ironically, I am he and he is me." I wondered with amusement how the procession organizers planned to get twenty-five thousand Indians in alphabetical order by tribe in time for the 9:30 A.M. grand entry, but despite a few exasperated "Tighten the lines!" coming over the pa system, it seemed that almost all the participants found a place and were reasonably in order by the time it began. I encountered my first tribal member from Lac du Flambeau while exiting the port-a-potty line. My cousin Bagwajikwe called out my name, and we were pleased to have family to walk with during the procession. Next I saw my high school friend Nils "Buster" Landin. His family, representing three generations, always danced in unison at our annual homecoming pow wow. Today, his children would carry in the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Nation flag, leading our contingent of about a dozen tribal members from Flambeau. There can be no dancing without a song, and our brothers from Flambeau were one of the few groups to carry in a big drum, drawing a flurry of cameras and video footage wherever they sounded the heartbeat. Our band of Ojibwes came in right behind the band from Lac Courte Oreilles, also from northern Wisconsin. If all of the bands of Ojibwes from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, and Canada had come in as one group, we would have made quite a contingent of Anishinaabegs. As the Lac du Flambeau band joined the procession, our men began to drum. The crowd on both sides began to cheer, and it was such an odd feeling; later on I would recall how it contrasted with what many of our tribal members experienced back in the early 1990s, as our men and women exercised our treaty right to spear fish in the ceded territories in northern and central Wisconsin. At that time the angry...

Simulating Culture: Being Indian for Tourists in Lac du Flambeau's Wa-Swa-Gon Indian Bowl

After the Second World War, increasing numbers of tourists traveled to the Northwoods of Wisconsin to recreate. Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Indians encouraged this process by availing themselves as fishing guides and by building in 1951 the Indian Bowl, within which they staged Indian dances and related cultural performances. This article examines the historical and intercultural sensibility of consuming and producing a simulacrum of Indian culture in the Northwoods of Wisconsin in the 1950s. It seeks to attend to the spectacle's significance and implications for local Indian identity over the course of the second half of the twentieth century.

Alcohol and Drug Prevention Among American Indian Families: The Family Circles Program

SUMMARY The goal of the Family Circles Program was the prevention or reduction of alcohol and drug abuse among American Indian High Risk Youth on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation through cultural enhancement of their family systems. The project was targeted toward families of high risk youth, ranging from four to eighteen years of age. A family systems approach was utilized involving the entire family, children, adolescents, parents, and grandparents. A culturally-oriented curriculum was developed which emphasized American Indian values, beliefs, and practices, relating them to contemporary life. Factors which positively impacted the implementation of the Family Circles Program included the development of interagency linkages, the retention of staff committed to the program philosophy, and the evolution of the project into a comprehensive and holistic system of services for the entire community.

Hidden Transcripts in the Chippewa Treaty Rights Struggle: A Twice Told Story. Race, Resistance, and the Politics of Power

After the Great Flood, Winneboojoo (half-man, half-spirit) found himself resting on a log with the other animals. There was no land to be found. Winneboojoo asked each animal to dive under the water to bring up some muck, from which Winneboojoo would make the New Earth. Each animal tried and failed except muskrat, who gave his life in the effort. Turtle offered his back to receive the spreading muck and in this way Winneboojoo was able to fashion the new world, which the Anishinabe call Turtle Island (North America). Contrast this creation story with the biblical creation story in Genesis, in which man is given dominion over the and Adam is told to name the beasts. In our creation story, animals are not subordinate. They are helpers, co-creators of the world. a distinction reflected in the words of Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe tribal member Nick Hockings. The rights that we have are traditional rights that go back, that extend back, that connect us directly with the earth. Hockings, a cofounder of Was-wa-go-ning, a spearing group that embraces traditional Anishinabe cultural values, told me, It's who we are. If you sever these webs that connect us to the earth whether it's the deer or whether it's fish or whether it's the timber or

The Chippewa and the other: Living the heritage of Lac du Flambeau

Englishman! you ask me who I am. If you wish to know, you must seek me in the clouds. I am a bird who rises from the earth, and flies far up into the skies, out of human sight; but though not visible to the eye, my voice is heard from afar, and resounds over the earth! Englishman! you wish to know who I am. You have never sought me or you should have found and known me. (Keesh-ke-mun, Crane Clan, hereditary chief of the Lac du Flambeau Chippewa, quoted in Warren, 1885:373)