Boozhoo!
We are the Sokaogon Chippewa Community of Mole Lake, Wisconsin. We are proud of our Heritage, our People and our Community. We invite you to take a look inside our community to meet our people to see how we're working and how we are growing. We acknowledge with gratitude the dedication of our Tribal members and the guidance of our Tribal council, whose efforts and support have made our accomplishments of the past decade possible.
The Gift of Harvest
on the Sokaogon Mole Lake Band of the
Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation
by Richard D. Ackley, Jr.
I steady our small canoe (jiiman), keeping my left foot in and my right foot out, as my cousin climbs aboard. We are on the banks of the eastern edge of Rice Lake, within the boundaries of the Sokaogon Chippewa Indian reservation, in northeast Wisconsin. Our Rice Chiefs have officially declared this lake ready to harvest. It is early September and the morning sky provides a dazzling blue canopy, as an inducement to proceed. The sun is as intense as it can be for this latitude and the air is a seventy degrees.
About Mole Lake
We are the Sokaogon Chippewa Community of Mole Lake, Wisconsin. We are proud of our Heritage, our People and our Community. We invite you to take a look inside our community to meet our people to see how we're working and how we're growing. We acknowledge with gratitude the dedication of our Tribal members and the guidance of our Tribal council, whose efforts and support have made our accomplishments of the past decade possible.
In the early autumn when the leaves begin to change color, the Sokaogon Indians of Mole Lake make their way to Rice Lake and one of the last remaining ancient wild rice beds in the State of Wisconsin. The annual harvest of wild rice, an essential part of the Indian diet, has altered very little in the hundreds of years that the Sokaogon have lived here. Family clans migrated from Eastern Canada to Madeline Island a thousand years ago, led by a vision that their journey would end in a land where the "foods grows on water" ...Manoomin or wild rice. The Sokaogon band's journey ended here in this area of abundant wild rice. Competition from the Sioux resulted in the Battle of Mole Lake in 1806. Today there stands a marker on Highway 55 in the village of Mole Lake to mark the battle ground where more than 500 warriors were slain in fierce hand-to-hand battle.