Background
The conflict started almost two decades earlier in the 1970s when two members of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of the Ojibwe Nation crossed a reservation boundary that divided Big Round Lake, cut a hole in the ice and harvested fish with spears, contrary to Wisconsin state laws. In a class taught by attorney Larry Leventhal, the members had learned their band held by treaty an unresolved claim to off-reservation hunting and fishing rights in the northern part of the state. The members were arrested and a Sawyer County judge convicted them of poaching.
Lac Courte Oreilles joined the legal fight on behalf of the two tribal members. The case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the state's argument that a lower court ruling upholding the treaty rights should be reversed. After the highest court refused to reverse the Seventh Court of Appeals' decision upholding the rights, five other Chippewa bands joined Lac Courte Oreilles' legal action. The Seventh Circuit sent the case back to U.S. District Court with instructions to determine the scope of the treaty rights and to resolve conflicts related to how the off-reservation resource harvests should be regulated.
In settling questions about regulation of off-reservation hunting and fishing, Crabb ruled the state could intervene to protect natural resources, but that tribes had the right first to establish their own regulatory system, which could prevail if they showed the court their system was as protective of the resource as was the state's system. After detailed scientific testimony, Crabb approved a natural resource code adopted by the six tribal governments, which allowed members to harvest walleye and other fish using traditional methods during the spawning season, when lakes are closed to state-licensed anglers.
Read more about this topic: Wisconsin Walleye War
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