This particular conflict started in 1973, when two members of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of the Ojibwe Nation crossed a reservation boundary that divided Chief Lake, cut a hole in the ice, and harvested fish with spears, contrary to Wisconsin state laws.
In a class taught by attorney Larry Leventhal, the members had learned their band held by treaty an unresolved claim to off-reservation hunting and fishing rights in the northern part of the state.
On August 21, 1987, the U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that six Ojibwe tribal governments had the right under these federal treaties for hunting and fishing throughout their former territories.
In settling questions about regulation of off-reservation hunting and fishing, Judge Crabb ruled the state could intervene to protect natural resources, but that tribes had the right first to establish their own regulatory system.
After detailed scientific testimony, Crabb approved a natural resource code adopted by the six tribal governments, which allowed members to harvest walleye and other fish using traditional methods during the spawning season, when lakes are closed to state-licensed anglers.
During the spring walleye spawning seasons of 1989, 1990, and 1991, the task force deployed hundreds of police officers from around the state to help local sheriffs maintain order at lakes where Ojibwe members began exercising their newly reaffirmed rights.
Dean Crist, head of the "Stop Treaty Abuse",[5] and Tom Maulson,[6] tribal chairman from Lac du Flambeau were interviewed on camera, not at the boat landings, but outside their places of business during the day with no protests in the background.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission reported that the Ojibwe speared only 3% of the walleye in treaty-ceded territory.
By this time, protest leaders had lost considerable prestige by reports of their groups' racially motivated chants, gunshots, bombings, and frequent rock throwing and slingshot attacks.
Also in 1991, the newly elected Wisconsin Attorney General, James Doyle, reached an agreement with the six tribes by which neither the state nor the Ojibwe would further appeal the federal court rulings.
As a result of the protests, a team of federal, state, and tribal biologists formed the Joint Assessment Steering Committee in 1990 to analyze the impact of sportfishing and spearfishing on walleye populations.
More than 20 years of research by the panel of fisheries biologists has shown that the walleye resource is not harmed by spring spearing, noting that only 9% of the tribal harvest is made up of females.
The events, issues, and people were explored in Lighting the Seventh Fire, a 1995 documentary film made by Sandra Osawa and broadcast nationally on PBS on July 4, 1995.