[1] The Bad River Reservation is located on the south shore of Lake Superior and has a land area of about 193.11 square miles (500.15 km2) in northern Wisconsin, straddling Ashland and Iron Counties.

They also pursued other seasonal occupations such as fishing, ricing, and hunting by men, and berry-picking, harvesting maple sugar, and gathering nuts, roots and medicinal plants by women.

The reservation land was set aside for the Bad River Lapointe Band in the Treaty of La Pointe, made with the US government and signed on Madeline Island on September 30, 1854.

The treaty land included almost 2,000 acres (3.1 sq mi; 8.1 km2) on Madeline Island, which is considered the center of the Ojibwe Nation.

During the Allotment period, the tribe leased almost half its land base, which originally covered all the area of modern-day Ashland, Wisconsin.

As Lake Superior Ojibwe, the Bad River Lapointe Band retains its rights to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice, and medicinal plants within the ceded territory of northern Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota.

Tribal members from Bad River and the other Lake Superior bands resumed their traditional practice of spear fishing, resulting in the Wisconsin Walleye War with recreational and sports fishermen.

In 1996, the Ojibwe activists the Anishinaabe Ogitchida blocked a railroad shipment of sulfuric acid from crossing the reservation; it was destined for a copper mine in Michigan.

The national attention brought by the protests forced the Environmental Protection Agency to stop the use of acid in the copper mine.

The tribe also owns and operates a fish hatchery, which stocks local rivers and lakes with 15 million walleye annually.

The Bad River Band of Lapoint Ojibwe own and operate on the reservation a casino as well as the Moccasin Trail gas station and grocery store complex.

The tribe also runs a clinic, local transit, tribal school, daycare, and Head Start, as well as a police and volunteer fire department for its people.

[8] The Bad River Reservation is primarily located on the south shore of Lake Superior and is nearly entirely covered by a forest and swamps.

[9] Less than 50% of the reservation land was tribally-owned as of 2010,[1] with the remainder owned by individually by tribal members and outside purchasers due to historic allotment under the Dawes Act.