Bad River Band keeps fighting for rights

The Thunder Film Fest welcomed a regional celebrity to its screening of the "Bad River" documentary Saturday afternoon at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. Mike Wiggins Jr., former chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was the guest of honor and featured in the movie.

"Bad River" tells the story of the Wisconsin-

based Bad River Band and its ongoing fight for sovereignty - not only its recent legal battle over the 70-year-old Enbridge Line 5 pipeline and the threat to the Bad River Band and Lake Superior, but also a long history of official mistreatment: children being forced into boarding schools, loss of reservation lands through allotment, forced relocation efforts of Native Americans, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs granting Enbridge the original right of way without the Band's consent. The documentary also touched on the rise of Native American activism in the '70s and the Wisconsin Walleye Wars that erupted when the Ojibwe tribes challenged the state's right to regulate hunting and fishing off reservation lands as granted in the treaties of St. Peters (1837) and LaPointe (1842). The film also features stunning photography of Lake Superior and the Bad River Reservation, which include lands in Ashland and Iron counties, 17 miles of Lake Superior shoreline and over 100 miles of rivers and streams.

What's the problem? The Bad River Band's right to tell Enbridge Energy that the tribe did not want to renew the lease that allowed Line 5 to cross their land, and concerns that the pipeline is a hazard as river waters threaten to expose the pipeline.

Although the documentary ends with a Wisconsin judge ruling that Enbridge must remove its pipeline by 2026, the Canadian energy company has appealed the ruling, and the legal battle continues. Additionally, a proposed reroute would still make its way across the Bad River watershed, a potential threat to the health of the people who live there and Lake Superior, where any oil spilled in the watershed would likely end up.

"It's just a really heavy, devastating kind of industrialized footprint, as they seek to keep their corporate profits rolling," Wiggins said.

He pointed out that there are six Enbridge pipelines going from Duluth/Superior to Chicago and on to Sarnia, Ontario, and one that travels from the Twin Ports to Sarnia through the Bad River Reservation. Line 5, he said, is "profit redundancy" for Enbridge.

"When it comes to the Great Lakes, redundancy and corporate profit should give way," he said, noting that Lake Superior contains 10 percent of the world's fresh surface water. "If we're ever going to be in a graceful transition away from fossil fuels, Line 5 stands as just an unbelievably logical and gentle first step."

Finally, Wiggins talked about the importance of changing one's mindset, and not adopting a mentality of scarcity, which he explained as believing one is suffering or unhappy because they haven't had enough money.

"The mentality of abundance is what I would put in your mind today," he said, urging moviegoers to not allow others to poison the way they think. "Everything we need is all around us. It's a beautiful day, we still have so many gifts around us to be thankful for. We know who we are, and that's a great foundation."

Lyz Jaakola, director of both the filmfest and the college's Ojibwemowining Resource Center, said they are rebuilding the filmfest after the Covid years.

The daylong festival also included "Birch Bark," by Cloquet filmmaker Gus Ganley and a local short film competition, with "Bad River" as the feature draw.

The final part of the day featured five short films, "all amazing examples of film genres Indigenous filmmakers are exploring and growing," Jaakola said.