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By Root 396 0

told now too how things are gathered up from the earth. One time this lake here, when I was about fifteen years old or maybe fourteen years old, I went around as a fishing guide and gave the white people whatever they would pay me for to teach them where the fish were at. Over there towards Neyaashiing I was told there were about fourteen of them [that] had moved. And we saw it from a ways off, as we eyed up those fish when they went along the shore. Now as I went over there you couldn’t keep your eye on what was happening as they had made a terrible mess in the water that was just getting picked up. These white people—as they motorboat along it’s that gasoline, they dump it there—they just put it there, those Big Knives as they’re called.

[30] And again this certain Indian, he used to bring his son along in the boat. I used to hang around with him when he went to the shore. “And look over here,” he tells me. Then I glanced over there at the shore in the direction we were heading. There was something vaporizing in the air here but they were kids, but it was like one could barely [see] where those boys were. Those bugs were hovering, so they’re floating there, so that’s what they say. “Those are bugs sailing around,” I tell him. “No,” he says. “Over here, go over that way,” he says. “Look over there.” And I went over and looked at [what turned out to be] gasoline floating there [on the water]. So he grabs [my arm] bones. “And take a good look at them,” he tells me. So I took a real good look at them. Golly, those boys were lowering something. “Those are walleye pike,” he says. “That’s how those white people do things,” he says. “The speedboaters [use] that gasoline. But they don’t do that in the [right] way. That’s how those white people are desecrating our waters so that we’ll be able to relinquish them. These white people want to have everything so bad when they fish, they have a very low regard for how things look underneath them. It just isn’t right for them to do that.”

[31] It used be this way a long time ago, that is to say that we used to find [what we needed] whatever we were at. It was put there. We could make use of things over there wherever we might happen to see them. That’s how they were there. I would not be refused when we found one of those [fish]. One time the catch was really good and there were sixteen fish or [a] little bit less that we grabbed with our bare hands as they swam up just fast and we had sixteen of those fish. The Indian people had good fortune a long time ago; he carried that with him in a proper way. When they went somewhere, we paddled over there by hand. And they didn’t motor around. When there was no money to be had, they found it disagreeable to use that which I had panhandled. It was just like that when we used to catch some fish. And we had to go a long, long way when we made sales of the fish we [caught] at the shore there. That’s how I knew about what those old men wanted to tell me.

[32] “And I used to walk along the shore there, walking along [thinking about] how it used to look,” they said. “This motoring around here didn’t happen like that, and the tin cans and other junk wasn’t left floating there. It should be clean. They cleaned them at the shore there too,” that old man said. “One time, one time nothing will be disposed of on the earth as it happens [now] and how it is made to look,” he said. “Right here those white people want to urinate in the lake there.” “Hey,” he says. “They’re dirtying it over here in the winter,” he said. “And that’s what they do. That’s what they’re doing with that lake. Those white people are going to fight us for what they want to have. But that’s what they say about this lake,” he said.

[33] They used to talk about the whole length and breadth of Mille Lacs Lake, all of it. Those old men talked about every one of these peninsulas here. Those old men were so knowledgeable about what was going to happen. Today, when we want to go somewhere, that’s no longer the case. So we aren’t able to do that, as I’m told more about a variety of other things