Ronald Paquin

• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, 1999

“I’m an Indian person, a man trying to raise money for my family and I says I don’t get what’s going on here but a bunch of baloney. I said the words you should pay attention to in the treaty when the Indian said, he said we’ll hunt and fish till the water stops flowing and the birds stop flying. Now, how much plainer can you get? You can’t argue. It’s like trying to argue two and two is not four.”

“They want everybody to go to trap nets, but it costs you a good $100,000 or more now just to get started. So they want me to go into trap nets. Well buy me a trap net rig. And I tried it and I didn’t have enough money to do it. And so — but we’re not talking about trap nets. We’re not talking about gill nets. We’re just talking about the right for the Indian to fish.”

“… they decided to invite me to the negotiations. And we got more waters after certain negotiations by me being there. Then they put stays on us. Well I thought it meant stay fishing, so I kept fishing, and they busted me, of course. Then I got busted on purpose to fight it. It was in the appellate court then, I did everything. I fought it hard.”

“I said it’s not the best we’re gonna get but at least, at least, we can fish now. You can go out there and make a living. That’s the best we can do. We’re not gonna get any better. Because if you prolong it to fight for more, you’re gonna be poorer than you are now. But at least we can go out and fish.”

George "Skip" Duhamel

• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, 1999

“The whole tribe here is based on fishing. When we first came here, we found a community in despair.”

“Everything was derived from us setting these gill nets because what it meant was a rebirth of the Ottawa, Chippewa, Grand Traverse Bands, as a nation….”

“I see in print things like Local Sports Groups Fear Duhamel May Deplete the Resource. I’m one man. Unfathomable that people would print things like that.”

“We don’t have to sulk and hide our heads. We can walk down the street, be proud of who we are. We’ve seen a rebirth of our culture, our language, our traditions, our customs. We have our sovereignty, we have employment, we have housing.”

Cindi John

• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, 1999

“We decided that if we had to keep using a little boat, I was gonna get off and work on the other boat, so if that one boat went down, we’d have one of us — left alive to raise our kids.”

“We were always in this controversy over trap netting and gill netting, small boat trapping, large boat trapping, and gear being provided to the tribe from the state.”

“We’re enforced on by state or by our tribal [officials] any tribe can enforce on each other, as well as the state can enforce on any of us and the federal and Coast Guard.”

James Raphael

• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, 1999

“Then the government comes along and makes these so-called treaties which I don’t believe in — not in one of them. You know, they were all falsified. I don’t go by any treaties. I only look up to them because it’s the only way I can fish right now and make a living and do what I like to do.”

“…we should be the richest Indians in the whole United States — right here — because it’s the most primmest place in the world for the Great Lakes and we’re not. Government didn’t abide by anything. State didn’t abide by anything. We should be getting paid royalties but yet everything was just stolen.”

“The more you give in, the more they want, the more they take, which got us as fishermen into this position. You give them a little bit and the more they take and they got us down to hardly no fish at all which is us. We’re fish people or we wouldn’t be living by the lake.”