![“In the Native American culture, the wolf is a sacred animal and part of our clan system also,” Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa Chairwoman Sandy Skinaway told Martha Fast Horse on her radio show in November, when the hunt was still active. “I believe the wolf is our relative … [it] is a clan animal.”](http://protectthewolves.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/baywolfpups.jpeg)
Idle No More Duluth, based in northern Minnesota, is using the recent federal court ruling that put the gray wolf back on the endangered species list to call for respect by non-Natives of hunting bans enacted on most Minnesota Ojibwe tribal lands.
The December ruling halted wolf hunts, which have taken place in at least six lower 48 states since the gray wolf was delisted from endangered species designation. Minnesota’s first wolf hunt was in 2012.
All of the Ojibwe tribal nations within Minnesota have outlawed hunting or trapping of wolves within their reservation boundaries. The snag, though, comes on reservations checkerboarded with non-Native ownership within reservation boundaries since the General Allotment Act of 1887. While virtually all lands within the Red Lake and Grand Portage reservations’ boundaries are held by the tribe or tribal members, others are like Leech Lake and White Earth, where 10 percent or less of lands within reservation boundaries are tribally held.
So although the tribes have banned wolf hunts within their reservations, the question arises over whether bans can be upheld on non-tribally-held parcels.
In the past, tribal leaders like the chairwomen of the Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa have emphasized authority within the reservations. “Certainly we’ll be keeping a close eye on all of our borders,” Fond du Lac chairperson Karen Diver told Minnesota Public Radio before the 2012 hunt. “And we are asking non-band member hunters to respect the outer boundaries of the Fond du Lac reservation and not hunt within our borders.”
“In the Native American culture, the wolf is a sacred animal and part of our clan system also,” Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa Chairwoman Sandy Skinaway told Martha Fast Horse on her radio show in November, when the hunt was still active. “I believe the wolf is our relative … [it] is a clan animal.”
via Idle No More Duluth Fights to Save Wolf, Ojibwes’ Brother – ICTMN.com.