Tribal sovereignty is at issue in Lac du Flambeau's lawsuits

 

Federal laws addressing tribal sovereignty and efforts in Indigenous communities to assert these rights are central to lawsuits over the Lac du Flambeau Band's moves to limit road and fishing access.

By Erica Ayisi | Here & Now

August 7, 2026 • Northern Region

Asserting sovereignty is key to the Lac du Flambeau Band's moves to limit fishing access.

“I feel strongly that everyone needs to take care of what we have on Earth — that means our water, our land and everyone’s well-being,”said Bagwajikwe Madosh, who is a citizen of the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.

A tribal elder, Madosh said she believes in preserving Ojibwe traditions, which the Lac Du Flambeau tribe is defending in federal court.

“Let us do what we know best,” she said. “Replenish to share lakes, keep our grounds clean, our forest.”

Long Interlaken Lake is one of 19 lakes within the Lac Du Flambeau reservation that a federal judge temporarily blocked the tribe from banning non-members from fishing walleye and muskellunge.

“We replenish the fish, we replenish what we take,” Madosh said.

Madosh said the tribe’s fish hatchery helps to maintain their stock, but added that there’s concern about the fish population.

“It’s not where you use it and then go on with life without knowing what’s going to come next,” she said.

The state of Wisconsin sued the tribe for blocking non-members from fishing in certain lakes. Lac du Flambeau President John Johnson said the fish population is declining, and is needed to feed their 4,000 tribal members.👇

“A lot of it’s climate change, a lot of it’s logging structures, infrastructure, everything that goes on in our territory — we’re here to protect it,” Johnson said.

Madosh said there’s overfishing on their lakes and rivers.

“We need to all limit what we take. And many people are taking what many people can have as well,” she said.

Flambeau Lake is also mentioned in the lawsuit against the tribe.

“Waaswaaganing, which is Lake of the Flaming Torches,” said a tribal member, sharing its name in Anishinaabemowin.

Adrian King grew up on the Lac du Flambeau reservation and has seen new neighbors over the years.

“A lot of these are non-Native houses as far as I know,” he said.

King said he supports the tribe in responding to a second federal lawsuit involving the tribe. This one was filed by the White Sand Lake Association, a group of non-Native homeowners. They are suing the tribe for access to use a boat launch on a private property on the shoreline of White Sand Lake that’s within the reservation.

“At least they’re experimenting or flexing their sovereignty a little bit more,” King said about the tribal government’s actions.

The tribe stated that the lake is “threatened by documented environmental concerns including the presence of Eurasian watermilfoil, an invasive species under Wisconsin law,” saying it threatens their cultural resources along the shoreline.

“Wherever the information and data came from, whether it was our own or the state’s, we pay attention to that,” King said.

According to the lawsuit, the White Sand Lake Association is asking the federal court to “decide whether a tribal government may regulate the activities of non-members on ‘fee-simple’ privately owned land and navigable waters in the state of Wisconsin.”

Torey Dolan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said the United States recognizes Indian tribes as sovereign nations who have the right to govern themselves, their members and their territories.

“It means that they’re exercising their ability to have a say over what happens in their territory and in their community,” Dolan said.

“When we talk about how they can govern themselves, what does that mean for the communities that are around them?

“Generally just being in tribal territory, you are going to interact with tribal law in some capacity,” she added.

Dolan said the Lac du Flambeau reservation is “‘checkerboarded” with non-tribal members purchasing property there because of the Dawes Act —the name for the General Allotment Act of 1887.

“Congress created the Dawes Act, which authorized Indian agents to go into tribal communities, parcel out the communal land, sell the surplus,” she explained.

In a different federal case in 2025, a judge sided with non-tribal homeowners in a dispute over access to four tribal roads that led to private properties on the Lac du Flambeau reservation.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs approved these easements and once they expired, the tribe sought to assert their property rights by closing these roads,” Dolan said.

She said the Dawes Act was motivated by a belief that Native Americans would die out, assimilate or be indistinguishable from non-Indian populations.

“That’s why we have so many legal and political issues today because they really didn’t expect tribes and tribal people to endure,” Dolan added.

She believes this issue remains important.

“Their ability to enforce their own laws means their ability to continue to exist as a people, to continue to exist in their territory, and to protect the area,” Dolan said.

King said in times like these, the different tribes in Wisconsin come together.

‘They feel a part of the tribe or a tribe, and they want to do their part to protect it,” he said.

Madosh said the pending federal cases involving the Lac Du Flambeau are about keeping their tribal sovereignty and maintaining their culture.

‘We as a people want to keep our earth as clean as possible,” she said. “That’s the main one that we need to keep for ourselves — and for our children for times coming.”

SOURCE: https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/tribal-sovereignty-is-at-issue-in-lac-du-flambeaus-lawsuits/ 

EDITOR NOTE:  My maternal birth family is from here. ... Trace