Video seeks to heal wounds created by Chippewa Flowage

“Deep wounds take a long time to heal,” says the narrator, “but the Chippewa Flowage has become a valuable resource to many people around it . . . . Be aware of the history beneath the water.”

Barbara Borns and Tim Tynan hope a new educational video they have produced about the Chippewa Flowage in northwestern Wisconsin will help heal deep wounds among the Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) band of Ojibwe Indians.

“I was listening to people report on their reaction [to the proposed celebration] and I thought, ‘There must be a lot of people who don’t know the history and why in the world the Native American community wouldn’t want to celebrate.’ So I very innocently said, ‘Why don’t we make a video? It can’t be that hard.'” Barbara Borns

At the same time, they hope it will prevent future harm to the flowage.

Borns, senior student services coordinator for the Institute of Environmental Studies, and Tynan, an IES graduate student in land resources, are the executive producer and writer, respectively, of the 13 1/2-minute video, which tells the painful history of the Chippewa Flowage’s creation from the tribal perspective but urges people to help protect the flowage today.

The title of the production, “Center of the Earth: The Chippewa Flowage After 75 Years, Looking Back and Going On,” was inspired by one LCO member’s on-camera description of the locale as the “center of the Earth” to her tribe.

The Chippewa Flowage, at 15,300 acres, is Wisconsin’s largest artificial impoundment and fourth largest inland lake. Situated in northwestern Wisconsin’s Sawyer County, the flowage was created in the early 1920s when the Wisconsin-Minnesota Light and Power Company built a dam on the Upper Chippewa River near Winter to generate electricity and reduce periodic flood damage downstream.

The dam was built despite strong opposition from the Lac Courte Oreilles people. They had long made their living by hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering along the Upper Chippewa but were forced to move when the flowage inundated the area. Although the power company promised to relocate some of the tribe’s buildings and the remains of threatened gravesites to dry ground, it never did.

Fifty years later, when the dam’s license came up for renewal in 1971, the LCO people protested vehemently and occupied the site. They also sued the dam’s owner, by then renamed Northern States Power Company, for damages going back half a century. The legal battle dragged on until 1985. The parties reached a settlement that transferred ownership of the dam to the tribe, which built a small new generating station and now sells electricity to the utility. Northern States Power also agreed to compensate the tribe for damages and legal expenses.

Though the decades-old conflict was over, deep wounds remained. Two years ago, when resort owners on the Chippewa Flowage invited the LCO people to join them in planning a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the dam’s completion, the tribe declined and hard feelings resurfaced. IES’s Borns, who visited the LCO reservation at that time to discuss possible collaborations between the LCO and IES, was told of the problem and had an idea.

“I was listening to people report on their reaction [to the proposed celebration],” recalls Borns, “and I thought, ‘There must be a lot of people who don’t know the history and why in the world the Native American community wouldn’t want to celebrate.’ So I very innocently said, ‘Why don’t we make a video? It can’t be that hard.'”

The toughest part was raising money to complete the video after start-up funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service were spent. Earlier this year, though, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) permitted the use of surplus DNR funds from last summer’s IES Environmental Studies Workshop for Native American Students to finish the project. Production costs for the “Center of the Earth” totaled a modest $7,000 to $8,000, not counting Borns’s or Tynan’s time.

“Center of the Earth” poignantly mixes history with an appeal for careful stewardship of the Chippewa Flowage by all who use it now. Tribal conservationists and the Wisconsin DNR all see the Chippewa Flowage as an outdoor treasure in need of protection. Though remarkably pristine, the flowage is under pressure from lakeshore development and increasing use of powerboats. Portions of the shore are eroding. In places the water is becoming cloudy and contaminated with harmful chemicals. Fish, birds, and aquatic vegetation are all at risk.

Dozens of copies of “Center of the Earth” will be distributed free to schools, libraries, community centers, resorts, chambers of commerce, and anywhere else in the vicinity of the Chippewa Flowage where they are likely to be watched. (Additional copies will be available for $10 each.) Anyone at UW–Madison who would like to see it will find a copy at the Environmental Studies Library, 15 Science Hall.

Borns and Tynan hope the video will help educate users of the flowage, Indian as well as non-Indian, about the hazards of taking the place for granted. But that’s not all.

“We hope we’ll make some difference in people’s attitudes toward the native community,” she says. “That’s the goal, at least. We’ll see.”