This year in the Glen Arbor Sun we’re publishing a series on the living legacy of the Native Americans. A desire to push back against the rise of xenophobia in contemporary America is not the only reason we chose to examine the living legacy of the local Odawa and Ojibwe among us. Across civil society in Northern Michigan, and throughout the nation, it seems that more and more people are interested in learning the Native perspective on this land and the human history it has witnessed.
About a block up the road from the old Cannery down on the shore in Glen Haven, Henry “Hank” Bailey gets out of a white Lexus in front of an abandoned, turn-of-the-century building that looks like it used to be a store. The whole village is deserted and sad. Glen Haven today is a bleak little shore-side ghost town in the bright sunlight. It’s the off-season, middle of May, the leaves on the trees are in delicate shades, fuzzy-looking and babyish in their newness.
When I spoke on the phone recently with Derek Bailey, current chair of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and now Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, he was crossing the Mackinac Bridge and returning home to Traverse City. The tires on his 2005 Saturn VUE hummed loudly as he passed over the rumble strips on the majestic arch that connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas.