Why we honor the living legacy of “Leelanau” Native Americans

Kathleen Stocking interviews Hank Bailey, a great-grandson of the famous Odawa orator Cobmoosa.

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

This summer season of flags billowing in the breeze, we Americans should recognize that we are living in an upstart age of extreme nationalism, as populists seek to protect the interests of those they believe to be the long-established inhabitants of the United States against those of the newest immigrants. This jingoistic political movement is burning across the traditional democratic American values of inclusion and tolerance, like a forest fire leaving charred fields in its path. As the embers smolder, this nation’s reputation as an open-minded, brave, freedom-loving and wonderfully diverse melting pot, a hope-giving and courage-giving democracy welcoming to all immigrants and refugees, faces one of its greatest tests.

Amidst the sudden urge to protect, to close borders, and to more narrowly define our cultural, linguistic and racial boundaries, we often lose sight of this sometimes inconvenient fact: we, the descendants of white settlers in America, were not here first. Much of what our earliest pioneers learned about how to survive, find shelter, and eat from this glacially-formed, wind-swept peninsula, was learned from the Native Americans. And contrary to what we may glean from schoolbooks and documentaries, the First Nation people are not confined to the dustbin of history, or to a museum. They do not belong to the past. They are still here.

This year in the Glen Arbor Sun we’re publishing a series on the living legacy of the Native Americans. Local writers and photographers, including essayist Kathleen Stocking, environmental writer Stephanie Mills, photographer Grace Dickinson, and Native photographer Minnie Wabanimkee, and myself, will be attempting to tell stories that focus on our understanding of the land here and, in conjunction with that, stories that feature members of the Anishinaabeg community who are having an impact on our everyday lives today. People like Ruby John (featured on June 29), the daughter of a prominent Odawa fishing family and a fiddler of Celtic and Métis music. Or Hank Bailey (June 1), a great-grandson of the famous Odawa orator Cobmoosa; Hank recently retired from the Department of Natural Resources at the Grand Traverse Bay of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and remains a tireless advocate for the Great Lakes, including working for the shutdown of the controversial Line 5 oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac.

We’re also reexamining old “truths” that may have been expropriated or reinvented by the white settlers of this region. For years, journalists, including me, have erroneously reported that Leelanau originally meant “land of delight” or “delight of life” to the Natives. That’s not true — and I’m grateful to Grand Traverse Band tribal attorney Bill Rastetter for setting me straight. In fact, the name Leelanau almost certainly came from Henry Schoolcraft, the white explorer who gave the heroine of an Indian love story in his Algic Researches (1839) the name “Leelinau”.

In his book Indian Names in Michigan (U-M Press, 1986), Virgil Vogel writes: “Schoolcraft, who probably invented the story, suggested the girl’s name, in revised spelling, for the county. One explanation of the name, “delight of life,” is purely fanciful. Moreover, there is no l sound in Ojibwa. The closest approach to the name Leelanau in an Algonquian language appears to be the Montagnais word laleu, “seashore.” Mentor Williams suspected that this story was chiefly Schoolcraft’s invention, adding that “The geography … links it to contemporary Indian tales in popular magazines rather than to an authentic Indian source.”

Telling the Native story

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. The astonishing pace of environmental degradation all around us makes learning about the profoundly wise and nuanced Native understanding of the relationship between God, man, and nature more relevant and urgent than ever.

The massive protests on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation against the Dakota Access Pipeline last year captured the world’s attention. Native people came together in solidarity from across North America to unite for one cause—perhaps for the first time in history. Non-Native activists also put their bodies in harms way to stand with their American Indian brethren and oppose the pipeline, notably including U.S. military veterans led by the son of Gen. Wesley Clark, the onetime Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. What a stark contrast to Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, and the cavalry’s violent subjugation of Native Americans over the last 150 years.

Here in northern Michigan, groups ranging from the Leelanau League of Women Voters to the Leelanau Historical Society have held presentations this spring and summer on Native history and botanical expertise. Meanwhile, Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City—with support from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians—plans to offer two new Anishinaabemowin language classes for the first time in about two decades.

“I think it’s important for anyone and everyone to learn and understand who we are as Anishinaabe people instead of hearing it from history books,” longtime Anishinaabemowin language teacher Isadore Toulouse told the Traverse City Record-Eagle in April. “We have enough educated people who can do those same things. There’s a big resurgence of teaching out there. It’s something that’s long overdue.”

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, too, intends to include more Anishinaabe perspectives and stories within the narrative the Park shares with nearly 2 million visitors who frequent the Visitors Center and trek into our sand dunes every year.

“We’re trying to incorporate Native voices more in our interpretive programs,” said Sleeping Bear Dunes superintendent Scott Tucker, who took the helm a little over a year ago. “We have funding this year to bring more Native American stories into park programing. We’re also working to bring Grand Traverse Band youth to the Park.”

Tucker and other Park superintendents nationwide received a memorandum last Oct. 21 from then Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (who left office three months later with the outgoing Obama administration) requiring each agency to “Identify Opportunities for Cooperative and Collaborative Partnerships with Federally Recognized Indian Tribes in the Management of Federal Lands and Resources.”

That includes incorporating tribal voices into local oral history, said Tucker. “Incorporating their voices is another aspect of what we do here at Sleeping Bear. We preserve and protect cultural and natural resources, and that includes the tribal story.”

Here are a host of other stories from our 2017 series honoring the living legacy of Native Americans of this region:

• Remembering Archie Miller, by Gabriele Shaw: Aug. 26, 2017

• Pow wow “bending of the knees”, by Hank Bailey: Aug. 17, 2017

• The complex—and sometimes controversial—history of the Reclining Bear, by Kathleen Stocking: Aug. 6, 2017

• Making Wood, by Kathleen Stocking: July 19, 2017

Ruby John, Native fiddler, by Kathleen Stocking: July 5, 2017

• U-M professor offers “American Indian history 101”, July 4, 2017

Pygmalion on the frontier, by Kathleen Stocking: June 20, 2017

Living Legacy: Hank Bailey’s relationship to the land, by Kathleen Stocking, June 6, 2017

• Sharing Anishinaabe history and culture, June 4, 2017

• Passage of time at The Homestead, by Kathleen Stocking: May 25, 2017