Taking the Long View
of Great Lakes Protection

Veteran tribal leader brings new spirit to preservation debates

by Dave Dempsey
October 16, 2009

Americans don’t ordinarily take the long view of things. In Michigan’s history as a state we’ve ravaged forests and left wastelands, dumped toxins onto ground and water that will take generations to remedy, and built industries that collapsed after a few decades and emptied the core of our largest cities.

Frank Ettawageshik

But there are Americans who have long looked beyond “today” to consider and contribute to a future they won’t live to see. Frank Ettawageshik, a veteran Michigan tribal leader and a major figure in Great Lakes protection discussions, is one of the most prominent. Active in elected and appointed tribal positions since 1989, he was recently named executive director of the United Tribes of Michigan. The position gives the former longtime chair of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians a new venue for carrying forward his work.

Ettawageshik does not disdain the political process designed by descendants of the Europeans in the U.S. In fact, although no longer an owner of the firm, he was a primary force in the creation of Michigan Tribal Advocates, a Lansing-based lobbying operation on behalf of four of the state’s 12 federally recognized tribes.

Mary Lindemann, who now owns MTA, says Ettawageshik brought a new approach to the job of influencing Lansing policymakers. The firm was “designed to think tribally all day, every day.”

According to Lindemann, when the Michigan Department of Education proposed high school curriculum standards requiring proficiency in a foreign language, Ettawageshik went to work, pointing out that Anishnaabemowin was the first language of the Great Lakes region’s original people. Although a native, not a foreign language, it qualified and was accepted by the department as meeting the standards’ second-language requirement.

“Frank is a patient teacher and provokes thought. He taught the European Americans in state elected offices that tradition and culture, manifested in language and circles or systems of life, are equally important to capturing funding for Indian students’ education.”

Ettawageshik was also instrumental in persuading state officials to treat Indian identification cards as official documents. The tribal cards are validated by rigorous background searches dating back to the 1836 treaty between the U.S. and Chippewa and Ottawa nations and handwritten accounts of every Indian person in the state. The Indian ID cards are now recognized in all state systems as being as legitimate as a driver’s license.

He’s also been deeply involved in negotiating and implementing a 2009 agreement between the tribes and Michigan state government regarding climate change, and another tribal-state accord regarding protection of water.

It’s worth noting that although Ettawageshik’s band operates the Odawa Casino Resort in Petoskey, his former firm does not lobby on casino gambling. Casino revenues do support conservation objectives consistent with his vision. The tribe has full environmental and conservation departments, buys conservation lands and is deeply involved with the lengthy dispute over cleanup of toxins at the Bay Harbor development project on the shores of Lake Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay.

While talking might seem the opposite of action to some, Ettawageshik believes it’s a critical avenue to bringing about policy change. “I’ve learned over the years that you don’t accomplish anything without an engaged discussion,” he observes. “And if you do have it, you can always find a way to whittle away at any differences.”

Two of the concerns he has been bringing to the table at some of these meetings — climate change and water conservation — are what state government and other political creatures of European descendants call “environmental.” But to Ettawageshik, they’re spiritual.

“There are bodies of native people who pray for the lakes; at churches, tribal lodges, and at other ceremonial fires. There’s an essence to water, it can heal and renew itself.” Referring to Japanese research that suggests prayer over water can improve its quality, he says, “it’s a scientific explanation of what we’ve known in our traditions for thousands of years.”

“We have to be careful how we use it, even when there appears to be abundant water,” he adds. “There are large areas of Lake Michigan that are really shallow. It wouldn’t take much change in water levels to expose the land underneath.”

A major obstacle to wise protection of the Great Lakes, Ettawageshik says, is that too many people are unaware of what sustains them. “You don’t just turn on a faucet and have water — you have to trace it back to the source. Unfortunately, we have people making decisions for us in the state legislature and Congress who are out of touch with that.”

Ettawageshik with Gov. Granholm at the 2004 signing of the intergovernmental accord between Michigan and the 12 recognized Michigan tribes pledging to work together on behalf of the Great Lakes. Photo by Gary Shrewsbury.

An unforgettable Ettawageshik observation at a 2004 Great Lakes conference in Chicago put the water issue in perspective. “One hundred and fifty years ago we had a resource in the Great Lakes region that was considered inexhaustible. It lasted barely two generations. This was the White Pine forest. The White Pine of this century is water.”

“I met Frank Ettawageshik more than 15 years ago,” says longtime Lansing insider Rick Wiener. “What an amazing person — a genuine Renaissance Man in the truest and finest sense of the word.”

Adds Wiener: “He’s one of those rare persons from whom I continue to learn valuable lessons about life — particularly on long-term perspectives. There are a lot of people who are better for having met and known Frank. I’m one of them.”

Despite their intergenerational outlook and longtime, sustainable stewardship of natural resources, tribes often don’t get the respect they deserve in the political process. When the Council of Great Lakes Governors prepared a draft of the Great Lakes Compact in 2005, the governors treated the region’s tribes as another “stakeholder” like business and environmental advocates, not the sovereign nations they are. Ettawageshik helped galvanize a meeting of representatives of 120 tribes and First Nations (Canadian indigenous peoples) that hammered out a statement calling for full consultation. The following day, the signers received an invitation to participate as nations in reviewing the draft compact.

Professing optimism about the future, Ettawageshik says, “Compared to where we were in the past, we’re way down the road to public understanding about the problems of water protection.”

But Ettawageshik said another thing at the 2004 Great Lakes conference worth remembering: “Mother Earth can live without us. When we assume that we are protecting her we are mistaken. She provides for us, but she can heal herself totally without our assistance. Actually, what we are seeking to do is to save ourselves. If we work with creation, and honor our place and responsibilities within it, then we will survive. But we must learn these lessons before it is too late for us, before we become even more of a liability to our own existence.”

For all of his work on water issues, Ettawageshik received the 2007 Great Lakes Guardian of the Year award from Clean Water Action Michigan.

“It takes courage and leadership to take on the powerful special interests in the giant, high-stakes battle over protecting Michigan’s Great Lakes waters,” David Holtz, Clean Water Action Michigan director, said at the time. “Fortunately for Michigan’s water-loving residents, we have special people who have met the challenge.”

Dave Dempsey is the author of two books on Great Lakes protection, a board member of the Alliance for the Great Lakes and former environmental advisor to Gov. James J. Blanchard. He is communications director at Conservation Minnesota in Minneapolis.