Scouting the Rez
by Nick Vander Puy
When we start on the trail before dawn Wabunung (the morning star) hangs over the eastern horizon. There are more than a thousand stars visible in the early morning sky. Al Baker and I walk into Baker’s ancestral hunting grounds on the southwestern corner of the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation near Summit Lake.
We pass through some lowlands and alders, eventually climbing some ridges through mixed hardwoods. The woods are moist from early October rains. Baker carries a lever action thirty/thirty Winchester. Baker hasn’t been out hunting much this fall as he’s been painting signs and trying to repair a roof. We cross the hardwoods towards an open area in the dark.
Baker has hunted this territory for more than thirty years. He grew up in Signor. He learned the woods from his father Al Baker Sr., and other elders Charlie Quagon, Charlie Perry, Mike Bongo, John Quagon, Stanley Quagon and a few other men from around the Billy Boy country. They still- hunted and made drives between here about two miles north on the reservation.
As the sun comes up we can see a little better. We stand near a boulder and gaze out on a scene of destruction. Al is surprised that he has taken us this morning to where the American Transmission Company has built a giant electric line on the reservation boundary. And next to the huge transmission line is an oil pipe line from Alberta, Canada buried underground. The clear-cut for the transmission and oil pipe lines is almost a football field wide. We suddenly feel connected to the Indigenous People of Canada whose lives, too, have been disrupted by the oil tar-sands and hydro developments at the other end of this line. We pause in stunned thought.
“The forest looks a lot different than when I was a youth.” Al Baker says, “You can see a long ways now, but before this forest was cut, when we used to walk on the top of these hills and hogbacks, you could see pretty far too under the forest canopy.”
There were a lot of huge aspen in this area, it was tall oaks and big pine trees, and the hills were covered with deer trails.
Baker says, “One of the reasons I kept going back into the woods was to find myself again, to get myself back to nature and to mother earth, and to the very nature of my being. And it helped me with some difficult times in my life to come and spend this time in the woods.”
My wife, Sandy Lyon, has told me that Al is one of the best hunters at LCO. “Every time I ever needed a deer for a feast,” she says, “I always gave tobacco to Al and he always brought me a deer. Many of the gatherings Walt Bresette and I organized at LCO were fed on deer meat from Al.”
“Al taught me how to butcher a deer,” Sandy says,” he cleans every single piece of meat so that you can eat every part of a deer that Al has harvested for the People. He was taught by his elders that to show respect for the life of that deer that you must be grateful and live your gratitude by honoring the life that animal gave. It’s a reciprocal relationship,” he told Sandy,” that one enters into when taking a life of a deer or a beaver or a rabbit. They give their lives up to us and we in turn must give our lives over to protecting the land upon which we all need to survive, including the animals.”
Two years ago there was nothing but trees and acorns here, when Baker sat on this same ridge and saw a big buck cross some oaks about a hundred and fifty yards out. He raised the scope up on his 30/30 rifle, but didn’t shoot because the animal was out of range.
But this morning instead of seeing deer we see a giant electric transmission and oil pipeline. There’s some heavy earth moving equipment down on the fresh clear cut. This doesn’t seem like a place the Creator is going to offer us a deer this morning.
“Civilization, you know, is encroaching upon us quite rapidly,” he says. “This had been some of the finest hunting woods in northern Wisconsin. Fortunately, there are still some good places to hunt on the rez and in the ceded territory.”
Al Baker laments the loss of the reciprocal relationship this industrial encroachment heralds. Baker is philosophical when he comments on how the old ones would feel about the destruction we see. “There’s a lot of things Indian people feel,” he says, “like it’s too much for them to worry about. They want to get things to a simpler way. And that’s the way we’ve always been. They feel helpless in a lot of ways I’m sure. Native people are always good at going around and working around things. I’m sure they’d have taken it in stride and just say ‘we’ll have to tighten it up.’ But they might have thought it was an advantage, too. Another place to drive deer to. But we certainly miss the trees and what it used to look like here.”
My wife has told me that to make it through the winter our family will need to have at least five deer. She butchers the meat the way Al has taught her and cans it up to last until the next season begins.
This morning we are sad because of the long term loss to Lac Courte Oreilles reservation hunting territory this pipeline and transmission foreshadow. We are hungry for deer meat. And then we come upon a fresh road kill when we leave. I offer asama (sacred tobacco) and harvest, with gratitude, deer meat to last us until our next hunt in deeper woods that these.
click on the picture to enlarge