Rez Life. David Treuer

the biggest challenge facing the tribe. Instead of pulling in and protecting the reservation from outside scrutiny, the Red Lake Band launched an aggressive program, along with the state of Minnesota, the federal government, and local resources, to restock the lake. It was a long process. The participants assessed water quality, breeding habitat, and genetically tested fish to find which strains were best suited to Red Lake’s waters. They had to enforce a strict ban against fishing on Upper and Lower Red Lake. Between 1999 and 2004 Red Lake and the state of Minnesota dumped more than 105.2 million walleye fry into Red Lake. By 2004 the fish were reproducing on their own. And hook-and-line fishing (not commercial netting) reopened on Red Lake in 2005.

      It was in these troubled waters that Jerry Mueller and his son-in-law crossed onto Red Lake Reservation. After Jerry Mueller’s boat was confiscated in May, Citizens for Truth in Government threatened a blockade of Red Lake unless the tribe effectively gave up its sovereignty. Many people, from Republican hopefuls to white anglers and resort owners, were still upset at what they saw as Red Lake’s mismanagement of its waters. Michael Barrett and Doug Lindgren leaned on the federal government to intervene—clearly trying to make Red Lake a campaign issue in the elections during the fall of 2006. The situation came to a head on August 14, 2006, when Michael Barrett, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 7th District, scheduled a speech at a fund-raiser in Bemidji. The fund-raiser was held at the Rotary Pavilion on the Bemidji waterfront, where Indian burial mounds had been razed in the 1920s to make room for a fairground. About forty-five people sat on folding chairs in the pavilion while forty more, mostly Indian, stood outside, ready to question Barrett about Red Lake. Barrett—a pharmacy manager—didn’t show up. He had planned to announce his desire for the federal government to enforce a 1926 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that the state of Minnesota had jurisdiction over a drained lake bed within the ceded territories but not on the Red Lake Reservation itself. It was an obscure ruling that in no way spoke to the sovereignty of Red Lake. Barrett, Lindgren, and Citizens for Truth in Government had been using this case as ammunition to shoot down Red Lake’s sovereignty despite the response by the state and federal government that it didn’t apply.

      Although Barrett didn’t show up, Doug Lindgren did. He raised the issue and got into a shouting match with the Red Lake Nation tribal historian and tribal secretary Kathryn “Jodi” Beaulieu, who called Lindgren and his position racist.

      Other Republicans present tried to backpedal and distance themselves from Barrett and Lindgren. “He went about it in the same way Mike is going about everything—head down and head first, like a bull in a china shop,” said the chairwoman of the Beltrami County Republicans, Kath Molitor. Mark Kennedy of the U.S. House of Representatives was surprised by the hubbub and didn’t know how to answer questions about Red Lake’s sovereignty. He said he’d never been to Red Lake but would love to visit. This gave the fiery Red Lake treasurer, Darrell Seki, the opening he needed. Seki is from Ponemah, is a fluent speaker of both English and Ojibwe, and is not known, generally, for holding his tongue or for keeping his opinions to himself. He’s a fighter, not a diplomat—and with his severe face, shaded glasses, and glossy hair, he cuts an imposing figure. “Any non-members are welcome to come to our lake,” he said in response to Kennedy, “and I hope they bring their equipment, because our DNR [Department of Natural Resources] needs equipment. Tell the non-members to come to our lake—we’ll arrest them. We’ll take their equipment, too.” He concluded by saying, “It’s our lake, it will stay our lake. We, as a Tribal Council, will protect our lake and our people. All the lands are ours and we are going to protect them.” One got the feeling that Seki had stopped just short of saying “by any means necessary.” What was clear was that Lindgren and Barrett, under the mask of favoring “fairness” and opposing “special rights,” were trying to turn Red Lake into a campaign issue. Red Lake Reservation, with nearly 10,000 members, is a huge voting bloc in the region and has the highest voter turnout in the entire county: according to some statistics, more than 90 percent of Red Lakers go to the polls. Of these, 90 percent vote Democratic. Reservations, after all, are covered by congressional districts, county districts, and sometimes local government as well. And while enrolled band members of tribes can vote in tribal elections, they are also U.S. citizens and can vote in the same elections as their non-Indian neighbors.

      As these campaign issues raged, there were other elections under way that summer. Buck Jourdain was running for a second term as tribal chairman against the tribal secretary Judy Roy. On July 19, 2006, Jourdain defeated Roy by a margin of seventy-one votes. Shortly thereafter, a Red Lake tribal member, Archie King, filed a complaint with the General Election Board alleging that Jourdain had bought votes and had used tribal funds for his campaign. The board agreed and ruled that a new runoff between the candidates was in order. Jourdain not only denied the allegations but said that the General Election Board did not have the right to call a new election. As for the complaint, Jourdain said that the “election was fair and my campaign was conducted in accordance with all election laws.” Furthermore, he argued, “According to the Red Lake election code . . . all challenges must be submitted and received within five days of the public posting [of election results] by the General Election Board.” The election issue was covered in the local paper, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and in the New York Times. Ultimately, the candidates squared off again. Jourdain won.

      What is clear is that, taken together—the mismanagement of the lake and the fish, problems with the police force, election disputes—all missteps and even the perception of incompetence, let alone corruption, do threaten the sovereignty of a place like Red Lake. Whenever something does go wrong—and things go wrong all the time—­someone raises the issue of sovereignty and suggests it should be done away with. But then again, all nations make mistakes. During the lobbying scandal involving Jack Abramoff, the Enron affair, Iran-contra, Teapot Dome, and the Whiskey Ring, to name a few, no one said, “Well, clearly the Americans can’t manage their own affairs; it would be best if the United States reverted to British control and became, once again, part of the British Empire.” And people often forget: the only reason there were fish to overfish in the first place (and the only reason the fish have been able to come back so strongly) is that since Red Lake is a closed reservation, there is no development on most of its shoreline—there are no sewage treatment plants, no resorts, no houses perched along the shore, no vacationers pulling up the bulrushes and cattails, no fertilized and pesticide-drenched lawns. Everyone has Red Lake and its leadership to thank for that.

      No wonder that Mueller was not cut any slack: the boat was taken, he was summoned, and Red Lake stood its ground. Reflecting back on the case, Grolla seems proud to serve Red Lake and the community he calls his own. “We’ve got a mind-set, you know. It stretches all the way back to when we fought the U.S. government, when we fought the Sioux. We’re used to warfare. We’re used to fighting. That’s who we are. People talk about how we’re a gentle people, you know. How we respect everything. We do, but we’ve had to fight for it. It’s kind of a curse sometimes, you know. I mean, hypothetically, let’s say a girl gets raped Back of Town [a neighborhood in the village of Red Lake] and then her brothers take after the guys who did it, beat them up, burn their house down. Then the perp’s family comes after the girl’s family and on and on it goes. They fight until people are in the ground and nothing is left standing unless you catch them and arrest them and stop it before it really gets going. That attitude, that fighting attitude, goes back to Chief Bagonegiizhig and Changing Feather, back to those guys. Maybe it needs to change. But it’s kept us alive, too. We’re alive because we don’t back down. There’s a message in that, maybe.”

      In the end, Jourdain was reelected, the Republicans lost their elections, and the Democrats won (largely because of the support they received from Indians in northern Minnesota). There was no flotilla of angry fishermen. Citizens for Truth in Government has not been able to persuade the state of Minnesota or the federal government to change its attitude to Red Lake, which still exists on a government-to-government basis, as all sovereign nations relate to one another. Jerry Mueller appeared in Red Lake Tribal Court in October 2006. He probably felt the way Indians on the rez feel all the time: surrounded, outnumbered, and unloved by people different from himself. He argued his case, and his defense was based on “Officer, I didn’t know and I’m sorry.” He lost. He paid his fine, and if he has fished on Red Lake since then, he has probably stayed far