Disputed Waters: Native Americans and the Great Lakes Fishery

by Robert Doherty (Pseudonym), Bob Mayer

This disturbing study of the struggle of the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians for traditional fishing rights in the Great Lakes raises legal and public policy questions that extend far beyond that region. Who owns common-property resources in the United States? Who should manage those resources and for whose benefit? Should Native Americans be accorded rights which supersede those of other citizens and restrict their economic and recreational opportunities? Can federal courts successfully resolve conflicts over resource allocation? In the pages of this book Robert Doherty follows the conflict from the 1960s, when Native Americans renewed their struggle to maintain their treaty rights, through to the confrontations that persist to this day. During the 1.970s the Chippewas of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, through federal court decisions, secured recognition of Native American rights to fish without state control. An ugly campaign of protest ensued, with vigilante groups and local police attempting to intimidate Chippewa and Ottawa fishermen. With the help of the Reagan administration, Michigan officials eventually circumvented the courts and regained a large measure of their former power in a negotiated agreement. Robert Doherty writes about these events with knowledge gained from documentary and media sources and from firsthand experience. He has been in the courts and on the beaches where confrontations took place and has interviewed many of the participants on both sides. For a while he even operated his own fishing enterprise. The result of his involvement is a provocative book, not afraid to take the side of what Doherty perceives as an oppressed minority group and to make policy recommendations to correct injustice.

172 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Pen name for Bob Mayer.

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As another reviewer has noted, the Robert Doherty linked is not the Robert Doherty who wrote this book.

Anyway, this is an approachable, quick and informative read about the history of the Great Lakes' land and water disputes between the Anishinaabe people who lived/live here and the white settlers who arrived over the many centuries of colonization. It's pretty fascinating to learn how rights and access to resources changed, especially how they differed under French rule, British rule and later American rule. Plus, it's really useful to see how fishing slowly became industrialized, and how Ojibwe and Odawa fisherman also fished commercially, but were systematically prevented from acquiring the same capital and resources that the main white commercial fishers acquired and controlled.

I'd add this, along with "The Death and Life of the Great Lakes," to a list of must-read nonfiction books if you live in Michigan and/or the Great Lakes region. There's so much history that just gets forgotten, especially how drastically we've changed the lakes themselves, either by accident, for our gain, or both. It's striking and kind of heartbreaking to look at them and swim in them and realize they are nothing like they were a century ago, let alone 500 years ago. Feels like hearing about a grandparent you never got to meet.

Any who - would definitely love to chat up a couple voyageurs who went into Superior country. Insane way of life.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book has been superseded by events (it was written in 1990), it still provides a serviceable discussion of the issues. Per force, it does not include discussion of Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians (1999), the U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the usufructary rights of a sovereign Indigenous nation (the Ojibwe).

The author of Disputed Waters, Robert W. Doherty, was a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught environmental history. He joined the Pitt faculty in 1968, rose to full professor in 1977, and taught in the history department until he suffered a stroke. According to his obituary, Robert W. Doherty died Feb. 5, 2013, at the age of 77. "Doherty served as an adviser and consultant to the Grand Traverse Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, providing expert witness testimony in federal court cases involving treaty rights." Also by the same author, Not First in Nobody’s Heart, co-authored with Ron Paquin, a Chippewa Indian. https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/archives/...

(As of posting this, Goodreads is under the mistaken impression that this book was written under a pseudonym, and that the author of Disputed Waters is not Robert Doherty, but someone else who writes pulp fiction, who uses a similar pen name. Hopefully the error can be corrected.)