The Unlicensed Net

A Chippewa Indian, an enrolled member of a tribal community, was arrested by a state conservation officer while fishing with a gill net in a bay of Lake Superior, about 20 miles from the nearest city. He was charged with fishing commercially without a state licence and with fishing with an illegal device, the gill net, and was convicted of both in the local district court. The state argued that the tribe never held title to the Great Lakes waters and so could not have reserved fishing rights there, that any rights reserved in an 1836 treaty were extinguished by an 1855 treaty, and that they were temporary and for subsistence only. He argued that his people's fishing rights under the 1836 treaty survived, and that the state could not require him to buy a licence to exercise them.