December 10, 1999

  Native American Press / Ojibwe News


Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nahgaun-way-we-dung seek to remove intruders from Red Lake Reservation

In late May of 1911, Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nahgaun-way-we-dung went to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, to speak with Special Indian Agent J.H. Hinton. They probably walked the 200 miles round trip from Red Lake. Eshk-way-gah-bow was about seventy-five years old at that time. They brought a petition and a letter with them.

Special Agent Hinton wrote about Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gun-way-we-dung's May 27 meeting with him in Hinton's June 1, 1911 letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs: "...It will be observed from one of the enclosures that they are much annoyed by white man who have married into the tribe, and by mixed-bloods who come and remain on the reservation.... The Indians who visited Detroit furnished a list of the names of mixed-bloods and white men who are annoying the Indians of the reservation. They wish to have them removed...."

Hilton also mentions that Nah-gaun-way-we-dung, Baym-way-way-be-ness and Ah-ke-wain-zee had previously come to Detroit Lakes (during the winter of 1910-11), seeking redress for the problem that the white men and "mixed bloods" were causing at Red Lake, for the hardships caused by the Red Lake school taking and where people had their homes and gardens, and because Nah-gaun-way-we-dung "feared that the white men and mixed-bloods of the Red Lake reservation had signed his name to certain petitions or papers and sent them to Washington and he denied that he had thus far signed any papers and sent them to Washington."

"Only a fragment of Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gaunway-we-dung's letter remains in the National Archives file. It was apparently received in the Commissioner's office on June 6, 1911, and the fragment begins in mid-sentence: "...was that provision of the treaty that our reservation should remain undisturbed for fifty years, the commissioners swearing to the agreement. Now, our white son-in-law is worrying us very much by grabbing land. We are not in a hurry to grab land. Not only that he wants to take our land, but also he forbids us to take wood and hay from the land around him, and he has many children. We look on this matter and they spoke to us. They spoke of the white man," explaining that if a white man, "takes an Indian woman, he is to support her at his place (outside of the reservation), and if our young man takes a woman from outside, he is also to support her at his place (on the reservation). Why I speak of our white son-in-law - indeed, he molests me by grabbing land on the reservation. I am thinking of putting him out...."

According to Hinton, Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gaun-way-we-dung told him: "that Adolph Barrett and A.A. McPherson are the most annoying white men on the reservation. To draw special attention to them, they put their names on separate slips of paper which are attached to the list of names referred to...."

The petition brought to Detroit Lakes on May 27, 1911 by Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gaun-way-we-dung - which Hinton described as having been "signed by many of their people" - requested the removal of: "Joseph Morrison [Mix Blood from White Earth], Frank Brun [White Man], John Klausen [White Man], Joseph C. Omen [Mix Blood], J.W. Brown [White Man], Norman Lesie [White Man], C.B. Curtis [White Man], Rennie Elliott [White Man], William Cook [White Man], Ed Cook [White Man], Louis Smith [White Man], Frank Barden [White Man], John Kelly [White Man], George Kain [White Man], Charles Smith [Mix Blood, from W.E. Res.], Adoulph Barrette [sic] [White Man], A.A. McPherson [White Man], Robert Foy [White Man], Patrick Moylan [White Man], Ocar [sic] Moore [White Man]."

Frank Barden died in 1916, the same year as his wife Fannie died from complications of childbirth. Rennie Elliott and his wife Lizzie Jane (Lawrence) had apparently both died by 1912, when their son Allie William was listed as an "orphan." Oscar Moore disappeared from Red Lake.

The other men on the removal request list remained at Red Lake and had "many children." By 1983, more than 1,650 of their descendents had been enrolled as Red Lake Indians - about a fifth of the entire Red Lake rolls.

Some of their descendents were enrolled with "Indian blood quantums" as low as 1/8 - and some, through the magic of BIA pen-strokes, as "fullbloods."

Eshk-way-gah-bow's name has been translated as "The Last Standing," and by 1911, Eshk-way-gah-bow was the last of his family. His first wife and child had died by 1867; his second wife and all of their children were dead by 1900. There were two men on the Red Lake rolls named Nah-gaun-way-we-dung; one of them had disappeared, along with his entire family, by 1920; the other died in October of 1920, and a few of his patrilineal descendants remained on the 1983 Red Lake rolls. Baym-way-way-be-ness died in 1938. One of his patrilineal descendants had moved off the reservation by 1983, and the other was rendered incapable of having children in an assault by a Red Lake police officer in the mid-1980s.

"White men and mixed-bloods" have been moving onto the land by Red Lake since the fur trade. Some of the people whose gardens Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gaun-way-we-dung- defended in 1911 were descendants of white fur traders who came to Red Lake in the late 1700s.

The BIA "Relocated" people into their Red Lake concentration camp during the mid- 1800's. Metis refugees from Louis Real's rebellion came from Canada to Red Lake in the late 1800's. Refugees from the White Earth allotment scams sought haven at Red Lake in the early 1990's. And lumberjacks and other white men have been marrying women at Red Lake for more than two centuries. Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gaun-way-we-dung's 1911 petition to Special Indian Agent Hilton was not the first. The BIA records in the National Archives are prepared with complaints about the behavior of "white men and mixed bloods."

Many of these immigrants did not understand indigenous forms of social sanction, which Lorraine Kingsley described in a 1986 college paper: "education and persuasion ... scaring ... teasing and ridicule ... and ... if a person has done something extremely harmful ... one very severe form of discipline"; "shunning." Eshk-way-gah-bow and Nah-gaun-way-we-dung's repeated requests that the BIA remove twenty men who were causing severe problems at Red Lake were made after everything else had been supported by a petition which Indian Agent Hilton described as "signed by many of their people."

The 1937 U.S. Supreme Court decision which the Red Lake Tribal Chairman is currently citing as a basis for exile by executive order [301 US 358] came from litigation which at least some people at Red Lake hoped would protect the land at Red Lake from the influx of "land-grabbing" whites and mixed-bloods coming to Red Lake, especially after the land base on the other reservations of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe had been decimated by allotment. There is a terrible irony to the way in which certain "Red Lake enrollees" are abusing the power claimed by the Tribunal Council, and these people might find some potent lessons in studying their own history.

The current system at Red Lake has been more-or-less "handed over" by the BIA to those Indians empowered by "Indian Self-Determination." But the system itself was created by the BIA, a centralized power structure designed to serve the needs of the colonizers. It rests on "Red Lake blood quantum," and on reservation land titles held by the United State Government "in trust," but the legal "owner" in the USA.

As various legislators and officials have explained in numerous government records, the U.S. intended that the reservation system would be temporary one, organized under a series of fifty-year plans specifically intended to eliminate the "Indian community."

For those "Red Lakers" who are apparently intoxicated with the present power, who do not seem to hesitate to want to remember Eshk-way-gah-bow and his people.



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Note: this news story was published under the - inaccurate - headline, "Red Lake Chippewa history of banishing whites, mixed bloods from reservation: descendants become members, leaders of tribe."

The petitions from Eshk-way-gah-bow and others at Red Lake paralleled similar petitions for removal at White Earth reservation, about a hundred miles to the west; White Cloud's efforts to regain control of the community at White Earth went to court and eventually failed: those "White men and mixed bloods" had come to the reservations in concert with U.S. policies of 'acculturation' and the destruction they caused in the indigenous communities - including  (documented at White Earth, likely extant on other reservations) rape and murder - was tacitly condoned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in its administration of U.S. policies.

The "editor's note" which accompanied this news story was inaccurate.  The Native American Press / Ojibwe News subsequently agreed to print a retraction, published as a letter to the editor.:

Wub-e-ke-niew was not a “Red Lake enrollee”

To the editor:

I am greatly saddened to read the statement that Wub-e-ke-niew was a “Red Lake enrollee” in the Native American Press/Ojibwe News (December 10, 1999, p. 8).

Wub-e-ke-niew spent his “lifetime of striving to understand the social fabric, values, ideals, language, and economic system of the people who call themselves Americans,” and worked for decades to address the problems confronting the Indian community from “within the system.” He also spent years doing “intensive research into the White man's own documents” relating to the history, legal systems and genealogy of Red Lake Reservation.

By mid-1990, Wub-e-ke-niew had come to a very clear understanding that one of the ways in which the United States maintained systems of oppression on Indian reservations was by defining and imposing their own White-created identities onto the people, for example through “tribal enrollment.” In December of 1990, Wub-e-ke-niew formally renounced his “Indian enrollment” and reclaimed his “real identity as Ahnishinahbæótjibway.” Wub-e-ke-niew was clear and very public about his having “turned in his Indian card” and “resigned from being an Indian.” The ways in which the 1934 I.R.A. Indian Tribal Council at Red Lake interacted with him during the remaining years of his life gave every indication that they acknowledged the reality of Wub-e-ke-niew’s non-Indian status.

Wub-e-ke-niew died in October of 1997. Six months later, Red Lake Indian Court Judge Wanda Lyons assisted Valerie Blake “with the paperwork” to probate Wub-e-ke-niew’s estate in the Red Lake Indian Courts. These courts have probate jurisdiction only over “Indians,” and the document which Judge Lyons and Ms. Blake used to enter Wub-e-ke-niew into Indian jurisdiction was a factually false Minnesota State death certificate. Donna Whitefeather subsequently provided the Indian Courts an undated “Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood.” This document indicates that a non-existent person having Wub-e-ke-niew’s son’s name and Wub-e-ke-niew’s date of birth is an “enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians.”

I went to probate hearing at the Red Lake Indian Courts in May of 1998—to object to their asserting jurisdiction over Wub-e-ke-niew and our property. The reasons that I was objecting to Red lake Indian jurisdiction were detailed in my “Notice of Special Appearance” and supporting documents, which I filed with the Clerk of Courts at Red Lake. (I requested receipts, and she provided them.) Shortly after the probate hearing began, I was removed from the courtroom via a lifetime order of exile signed by Bobby Whitefeather. The only words I ever had an opportunity to speak in that Indian Court were to object, politely, to my being removed. Red Lake Indian Judge Bruce Graves continued the probate hearing after I (and a witness) were removed. Indian Judge Graves’s decision in that probate case has been used to claim almost everything that Wub-e-ke-niew and I owned, including property physically located off of the reservation.

If the Red Lake Indian Courts’ claim that Wub-e-ke-niew was under their Indian jurisdiction had been legitimate, there would have been no reason to silence my voice in that Indian court by exiling me.

I very much appreciate that the Native American Press/Ojibwe News is committed to publishing a factually accurate newspaper. I also understand that the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians is continuing to state that Wub-e-ke-niew was, despite every indication to the contrary, an “enrolled Indian.” Although I dislike conflict, the honor of my deceased husband is something which I will continue to uphold, and it is conceivable that the question of Wub-e-ke-niew’s identity may end up in federal or international courts. Given the circumstances, it would have been more accurate to write something like, “whether or not Wub-e-ke-niew’s renunciation of his Red Lake Indian enrollment was legally binding is currently being contested. Wub-e-ke-niew and his wife (and a great many other people) believed that he had legitimately and legally dis-enrolled and reclaimed his real identity as Ahnishinahbæótjibway. Since April of 1998 (i.e. about six months after Wub-e-ke-niew’s death), the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act entity called the ‘Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians’ [tribal council] has been making claims that Wub-e-ke-niew had remained their ‘enrolled Indian’.”

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify what may have been a misprint.

I take full responsibility for my own words. My mailing address is P.O. Box 484, Bemidji, MN 56619 and my voice-mail number is (218) 586-6330.

Clara NiiSka