Ron DePerry was headed to jail.
He knew he had been caught in the act, no question about it. But, unlike most crooks, DePerry didn’t try to make a getaway. In fact, he planned to be led away in handcuffs that day — Sept. 17, 1969.
DePerry and seven others figured that was the only way they were going to bring attention to their cause — upholding the rights of the Ojibwe people as described in the Treaty of 1854, which allowed them to gather fish in Lake Superior.
It was the beginning of lengthy legal battle that ended in Ojibwe victory — a story that DePerry recounted in Red Cliff in an effort to remind people of the struggle they endured.
When the Citizenship Act granted citizenship to Native Americans in 1924, it also subjected them to the same rules and laws as everyone else. While granting them some rights, it also robbed them of their rights to fish, hunt and gather on the lands known as ceded territory, covered by the 1854 treaty, DePerry said.
Natives lived with those restrictions, which essentially prohibited a way of life practiced for generations. That is, until one day in 1969 when DePerry, Phillip Gordon, Richard Gurnoe, Allen Bear, Louis Peterson, Roger Basina, Tom Deragon and Tom O’Connor set out to determine just how serious the federal government was in enforcing those restrictions.
“If you didn’t have a license, you know, you’re going to be arrested for hunting or fishing,” DePerry said. “Let’s try to do a test case. Let’s test them fishing.”
The men set gillnets in the water of Buffalo Bay, where state game wardens, federal fish and wildlife service agents and anyone else could see exactly what they were doing.
“As they were lifting the nets, there comes a great big sucker (fish). Then all of a sudden the game warden says on the microphone, ‘Alright guys, you’re under arrest,’” DePerry, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, recounted.
Three weeks later two Bad River tribal members also were cited for netting fish in Lake Superior, setting up the legal battle. A county judge initially ruled that the Treaty of 1854 didn’t protect Ojibwe fishing rights. That wasn’t the end. Three years later the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in the case Gurnoe v. State of Wisconsin that the government had illegally restricted the Ojibwe rights granted in the 1854 treaty.