Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [60]
It was just an empty floating mass out there. I don’t know, they always leave their [garbage] over there and dirty the lake. One time though they’re going to lose the lake. It’s a little bit right now, we just harvest those fish with nets a little bit now. But we are going to have [unfettered rights] to spear them. That’s what they’re saying now, as the Indian is told “No.” But those white people themselves say that they want to do these things, to catch [more] fish. Some summer they’re going to harvest fish with nets. But any time, any day whenever the [Indians] had killed many fish, killing all kinds of them, “Bring whatever you’ve killed,” they’re always told.
[34] But then these ones who’ve helped us, these old men who encountered those [whites] have been able to bestow a great gift upon us. That’s this Migizi as he was called, and also that Zhaabaashkang who were chiefs here. That Migizi, he was my grandfather, and his father was the one called Zhaabaashkang as well. They’re the ones who were able to do this even when there were so many [whites] over this way. And regarding that so-called Bagone-giizhig, it was because of the ones who wanted to help the [whites] that we were given this land just like the land had been taken away from us.* And those white people said this, “It is good, it is in a good way that the Indians shall take this land. They didn’t want to foolishly fight the white man.” The one called Migizi, Bagone-giizhig had not consulted him or any of the Indians anywhere about the killing of whites there. From over this way to up there, up to the edge of Nisswa and also over there by Brainerd as it was called, all the white people there were in an uproar. Those sentiments intensified as the white people [thought about] killing all the Indians. That Bagone-giizhig was just helping to make things worse. So the one called Migizi here, he says, “No. We are not fighting.” Then Bagone-giizhig himself said the same thing about the situation. Then there was never any fighting again. Migizi was thanked there for not going to war, and they were given title to this land. That’s why it was written down in the [treaty] that we own this here land. Some of them still made a land cession. But they never ceded this here, or the trees, fish, deer, and that rice. The Indians took care of those things. That how the ones at Mille Lacs have been able to [keep the land]. So they helped over that way, over there in the east, and they won there too.† Up until then the white people were getting beaten. “Not any longer,” he would say then.
[35] And that’s what those old men told me about. Always, I will always remember what they told me in this good way, how we kept our hold on this land so well. Well we didn’t do [bad] things to this land when we migrated here on the waterways. And the white people certainly didn’t paddle us over here. The Great Spirit gave it to us so that we could take care of it. And that’s why we are able to do so today. So I help him with things since we have been considered in such a wonderful way to be able to migrate [here]. Always, I always remember how the people live so well on the earth, how the Indian enjoys his life when he hunts.
My Rabbit Quest
[36] Something happened [one time] way off in the tules. We went over that way. Not too far over that way we had been hanging up [snares] and killing those rabbits. I thought that old man was acting silly in the things I did with that old man at that time. “Come, come on, come on let’s go snaring over there,” he tells me. “Those rabbits.