Talk:Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the sub-project WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America/Anishinaabe, an attempt to gather and assess articles on the Anishinaabe peoples for the larger project WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, which collaborates on Native American, First Nations, and related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. If you specialize in articles related to the Ojibwa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Mississaugas, Nipissing, Algonquin, Saulteaux, or Oji-Cree, please visit WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America/Anishinaabe as well.
???	This article has not yet been rated on the assessment scale.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. Before assessing this article, be sure to check the existing Archive of assessments made under the previous system (used until July 2006), and feel free to help in migrating the existing comments besides from adding your own evaluation. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.
Please rate this article and leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

This article is part of WikiProject Michigan, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Michigan.

I merged content from a recently created article Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa into this already existing article at the full name for the band and redirected that page to this one. For GFDL purposes here is the history of that page. older ≠ wiser 01:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

   * 01:44, February 15, 2006 Bkonrad (merging with existing page at full name Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians)
   * 04:22, February 13, 2006 Jtmichcock (→The Ottawa Tribe)
   * 04:15, February 13, 2006 Jtmichcock m (→Tribal History)
   * 04:15, February 13, 2006 Jtmichcock (add chair, offices)
   * 04:10, February 13, 2006 Jtmichcock (→Tribal boundaries - wikify)
   * 04:05, February 13, 2006 Jtmichcock (adding stuff)
   * 03:49, February 13, 2006 Jtmichcock (add logo)
   * 03:51, February 8, 2006 Jtmichcock m
   * 02:47, February 8, 2006 Jtmichcock (→Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians)
   * 02:26, February 8, 2006 Jtmichcock (→Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians - add)
   * 01:56, February 8, 2006 Jtmichcock (Add detail)
   * 00:50, February 8, 2006 Jtmichcock (→History of the Ottawa Tribe - adding)
   * 00:05, February 8, 2006 Jtmichcock (Creating page, just getting started, more coming)

Since the article Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa was requested at Wikiproject Michigan, I had assumed that someone checked. I guess the "assume" thing is true. I have added the WPM logo. Jtmichcock 02:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

No problem. older ≠ wiser 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 misplaced content? 1.1 The Ottawa Tribe 1.2 The Chippewa Tribe 2 Discussion 3 Split the article

[edit] misplaced content?

I can't where the "Constituent Tribes" described in the merged article and copied below are in fact actually associated with the Grand Traverse Band. As far as I can tell, they are separate entities. older ≠ wiser 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. We have been taking inventory of all Anishinaabe-related articles and I have noticed that in our collecting, we don't have an article for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. Plucking the Pokagon Band information from here and using it as the start-class article for them might be a better choice. CJLippert 23:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Ottawa Tribe

The Little River Band Ottawa received federal recognition of status in September, 1994 as a Native American tribe. Ottawa, or alternatively "Odawa" or "Odawu," derives either from the term "trader" or a truncated version of an Ottawa phrase meaning "at home anywhere people." Historically, the members of the Little River Band tribe are descendants of and politically successors to nine Ottawa Bands who were party to the Treaties of 1836 and 1855 of a total of nineteen bands listed as Grand River Band Ottawa. After the 1855 Treaty, all of the Ottawa Bands located from the Manistee River south to Grand River near or on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan were relocated to reservation lands in Mason and Ocaena Counties. The permanent villages of the Grand River Bands Ottawa including those nine Bands now considered as Little River members, were located on the Thornapple, Grand, White, Pere Marquette and Big and Little Manistee Rivers in Michigan’s western Lower Peninsula.

The Ottawa and Chippewa Treaty of Detroit was signed in in 1855 and created an Ottawa/Chippewa nation, but this was a legal fiction inasmuch as the two tribes were unrelated.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted by the United States Congress, promising ownership of 160 acre tracts to a head of a family after they had cleared and improved the land and lived on it for five years. By 1934, when the General Allotment Act of 1887 was repealed and the Indian Reorganization Act enacted, the Little River Bands did not owned any lands either collectively or in trust status. Vigorous lobbying led to their recognition in 1994.

The Ottawa tribal council governs the community; the Ogema (Chief) is the council chairperson. The tribe has jurisdiction over 380 acres (hectares)of land in trust status and additional 220 acres used for housing. The tribe has 1,400 additional acres set aside for future tribal development. Gambling revenues are earmarked to support educational scholarships, health and substance abuse programs, early childhood projects, child welfare protection, law enforcement services and elderly initiatives.

[edit] The Chippewa Tribe

The Chippewa (also "Ojibwe", "Ojibway", "Chippeway", "Anishinaabe", or "Anishinabek") are the largest group of Native Americans north of Mexico, including Métis. They are the third largest in the USA, surpassed only by Cherokee and Navajo. The Bay Mills Indian Community is located at the land base of the Sault Ste. Marie band of Chippewas. With the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Bay Mills Indian Community was one of the four original reservations established in Michigan. In 1937, land was purchased for Bay Mills and the BMIC was organized with the adoption of their Constitution and Charter on November 27, 1937 in accordance with the Act. These lands, along with the original Bay Mills Mission and a small area on Sugar Island, comprise the majority of the current reservation land holdings in Chippewa County.

The tribe consists of approximately 1,309 registered members and is governed by the General Tribal Council, consisting of all voting-age members of the tribe. Daily decisions are made by the Executive Council, which consists of five elected officials (president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, councilman). The Tribe's land base is approximately 3,494 acres (14.14 km²), of which 3,109 acres (12.58 km²) are in trust.

Bay Mills Community College is an accredited tribal college operated by the community.

[edit] Discussion

The three groups make up the collective population of the Grand Traverse tribe, which is not a homogenous grouping. The GT tribe members are historically descended from these three groupings and their cultures are derived from these three bases. As noted in the article, the Ottawa and Chippewa were incorrectly lumped together into one grouping and the consequence of that was that reservation land that should have been one-tribe ended up becoming multiple. My understanding from reviewing the histories is that each grouping self identifies ethnically along the three original lines, but politically are integrated. Jtmichcock 02:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

But there appears to be separate organizations for the Bay Mills Indian Community, River Little Band of Ottawa Indians and Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians that make no mention whatsoever that I can see of the Grand Traverse Band. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. And neither does the Grand Traverse Band web site make mention of the other two (except in the form of posting notices of general interest to the Indian community) older ≠ wiser 02:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Those are political entities. I am speaking in terms of the ethnicity and origin of the individual tribe members. I have excised some material and given a brief cultural overview of the histories of the three ethnicities on the main article to give readers a sense of how three tribes landed in one area. Jtmichcock 02:43, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

If that is the case, then I think this is still misplaced content, as the exact same content could go into each of the articles about the related bands. I'm not sure what you mean by "main article". older ≠ wiser 02:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that should just be article. The informative concept is that the three different tribes are all in geographic proximity to one another, yet maintain a separate political identity. It's like an article about Scotland and discussing how the Picts, Celts and Danes found themselves geographically tied to the same region and ended up forming a nation. It gives the reader a broader understandinf as to why these three groups formed the GT band and not, say, the Navaho and Apache. Jtmichcock 02:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a more appropriate place for this information might be Council of Three Fires? It just seems very odd to me that this article about one specific political entity contains general background information about the other three. Seems that the focus of this article should be this band. older ≠ wiser 03:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The articles on Switzerland and Czechoslovakia both have origins of the constituent ethnicities. While the focus is on the band, you can't ignore the question as to how the band was formed from three different groupings. 03:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I dunno, it seems somewhat confusing -- most "officially recognized" tribal entities in the U.S. consist of a mixture of tribal enthicities. Some description is certainly appropriate here, but, for example, the information about the Chippewa Tribe and Pokagon Band seems rather too general to be included here. What exactly is the necessity of spelling out details about these other separate tribal entities in an article about this tribal entity? Shouldn't that detailed information be in articles about those tribal entities? Then link to them from this page and mention that some members of that heritage are part of the GR tribal entitity because of the historical circumstances concerning the creation of such arbitrary tribal entities. Beyond that, the GR tribal web site doesn't include that information in its own history -- is there a source for this information? older ≠ wiser 15:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split the article

Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa is a federally recognized tribe, but so is the the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. If this article was on the Anishnaabe Tribes of Lower-Peninsula Michigan, then the grouping would be fine but since they are three Anishinaabe Subtribes forming Two Federal Tribes, the article need to be split to properly reflect the two Federal Tribes. CJLippert 16:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)