Ishpaagoonika Deep Snow Camp

Excitement filled the Mole Lake Rec Center as 13-year-old Ganebik Johnson and the other children and adults gathered around the Ojibwe tribal elders as they prepared to fillet the day’s catch of muskies for the community.

Dozens of Ojibwe from different bands in Wisconsin had spent the January day on a frozen Pelican Lake in Oneida County, telling stories around holes dug through the ice, waiting for a chance to spear a musky.

They had caught almost 10 of them that day, with many being about two feet long, during the annual Ishpaagoonika Deep Snow ice spearing camp.

After the muskies are filleted, they’ll be soaked in milk overnight to remove some of the fishy taste, then smoked and distributed to elders and the Mole Lake Ojibwe community on the reservation.

Ganebik is nearing the age when he’ll be mentoring other children and even some adults on how to spear the traditional way at these camps. That’s exactly what tribal elders and organizers hoped for when they started the camps in 2018.

“A lot of the kids had never done this before, nor had their parents, because they were raised in the cities and they were moving back to the reservation,” said Mole Lake elder Wayne LaBine, who started the camps.

“Initially, it was for kids, but we also started bringing adults. So, it grew over the years. … A lot of adults and kids come out to learn how to fish, hunt, gather rice and (collect) maple syrup in the spring.”

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Today, with more financial leverage, many tribes have been able to build economies slowly, as well as apply for more federal grants for housing projects and other needs.

While that revitalization attracted some families to come home generations later, many had forgotten much of the traditional ways of spearing, hunting and ricing.

Tribal elders saw that as an opportunity to also revitalize the culture — especially LaBine who’s a member of the Voigt Task Force, which helps to ensure Ojibwe people maintain their treaty rights.

Many Ojibwe view hunting and fishing, especially off-reservation in northern Wisconsin, almost as a duty to maintain hard-fought treaty rights.

Ojibwe territory had once included much of northern Wisconsin, but 22,400 square miles were ceded to the U.S. government through treaties in the mid-1800s for extraction of timber and other resources.

Tribal leaders at the time made sure the treaties included the right for Ojibwe to continue to harvest, hunt and fish in the Ceded Territory.

Those particular treaty rights were largely forgotten or ignored by state officials in the 20th century, but some Ojibwe people would still clandestinely exercise those rights to hunt and fish off-reservation.

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