Odanah, Bad River Nation

Odanah, whose name is the Ojibwe word for village, is the main village and tribal seat of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa, one of six federally recognized Ojibwe bands in Wisconsin. The Bad River Reservation was established by the eighteen fifty-four Treaty of LaPointe, a moment when the Ojibwe agreed to cede millions of acres in exchange for guaranteed reservation lands along Lake Superior's south shore. Today the reservation covers nearly one hundred twenty-five thousand acres, making it the largest Chippewa reservation in Wisconsin.

It includes Lake Superior shoreline, the Kakagon Sloughs, more than one hundred miles of rivers and streams, and some of the most intact wild rice beds in the Great Lakes region. The Bad River Band has worked to protect that wild rice and the broader watershed from mining and pollution threats in recent decades.