Mille Lacs Gill-Netting: Biggest Scam on State's Outdoor Scene

 
By Joe Fellegy, Outdoor News, April 14, 2010 (reprinted with permission)

I’ve strongly opposed the only spawning-time walleye gill-net fishery in the United States, without feeling guilty.

Ponder the high-impact Mille Lacs monster: enormous walleye totals, plus tons of unwanted and wasted pike; a giant cultural affront to most Minnesotans, who embrace closed seasons during spawning; gross misrepresentation of Ojibwe culture and history for political purposes; taxpayer millions for tribal, federal, and state management bureaucracies; disproportionately high tribal fish allocations; a tradition of go-with-the-flow acquiescence among state officials, who lost an air-tight case and helped shape the present intolerable system.

Consider, too, the hands-off approaches by journalists, politicians, and the conservation community. And there’s the modern separate-and-unequal race politics—central to the new tribal “sovereignty”—that celebrates differences instead of commonalities.

Almost 20 years ago, the Mille Lacs Band government launched its unnecessary 1837 Treaty case against a generous state that signed compacts for two Mille Lacs Band casinos. Had one polled Band members in 1990 about a spawning-time gill-net fishery, it’s likely 90-plus percent would have said no. Unfortunately, the Indian Industry, not the Indian people, ran the show.

For the rest of the column, please click on Idol Fishing