The Bois Forte Band and the Lake They Never Left

The Bois Forte Band of Chippewa has lived around Nett Lake and the Vermilion Lake area of northeastern Minnesota since time beyond the accessible written record, and their presence here predates every other use of this landscape by at least several thousand years. The name Bois Forte is French for strong wood, given by fur traders in the eighteenth century to distinguish this band from other Ojibwe communities. The Ojibwe name for themselves in this region is Anishinaabe.

The treaties of the mid-nineteenth century reduced the band's land base substantially but did not remove them from their territory. The Bois Forte Reservation, centered on Nett Lake and the smaller Lake Vermilion tract, was established by treaty and has been continuously occupied since. The wild rice beds of Nett Lake have been harvested by band members for generations, and the ricing rights guaranteed by treaty remain legally in effect. The Bois Forte Band is one of the federally recognized members of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and governs its own affairs from the Nett Lake tribal headquarters.

The lake system that makes up most of Voyageurs National Park sits adjacent to Bois Forte territory. The park was designated in nineteen seventy-five without full tribal consultation, a pattern common to federal park designations of that era. The band has maintained treaty rights to the lake area despite the park designation, and the relationship between the park's federal management and the tribe's treaty rights is an ongoing negotiation rather than a resolved question.

The water you are looking at was Anishinaabe water before any map was drawn of it. That fact is not erased by the federal designation. It is simply present, alongside the designation, in the same way that the wild rice grows alongside the houseboats, in a geography that holds more than one history at once.