"They
just can’t go to a hospital and take a body from the ER and put it
back into the station wagon and drive away," Aitken County
Deputy Coroner Chuck Brenny said… "Pretty soon, everybody will
be doing it."
– Manominike
Giizis, August 1990, discussing the repatriation of Egiwaateshkang
(George Aubid) by his son Mushkooub, who took his father’s body
from the coroner’s office in a station wagon home, to send him on
his path to the spirit world.
Some
things change, but many stay the same. February’s passing of
Mushkooub Aubid, son of George Aubid followed the same story line.
Mushkooub Aubid, 65, was involved in a serious car
accident on Feb. 7 and was pronounced dead at Cloquet Memorial
Hospital. His body was taken to the medical school at the University
of Minnesota Duluth, where an autopsy was set for Feb. 10, long after
the traditional practice would allow. “We just want to prepare his
body for his journey to the next world,” Winnie LaPrairie, his
widow, said. “This is the way it’s been done for thousands of
years.”
It
took, a lot of pressure and 25 tribal members to bring their chief
home. Band administrators and attorneys said a forced autopsy would
violate the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. “We’re trying
to do this peacefully and according to the law,” Dan LaPrairie,
Aubid’s son said. “But our beliefs supercede those laws. Our
father gave us explicit instructions for what to do when he passed,
and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
Officiated
by Dr. Anton Treuer, the well-attended funeral and wake included
representatives from most of the Anishinaabeg communities in the
region and the traditional Midewin Societies. The funeral was held in
East Lake or Minisinaakwaang, home of the Rice Lake Band of
Mississippi Anishinaabe or Manoominikeshiins-ininiwag.
Mushkooub’s
life, like that of his father, Egiwaateshkang, and the name Mushkooub
received – He that is Firmly Affixed – was marked with defense of
the land and way of life of the Anishinaabeg, at the center of which
was the political autonomy of Minisinaaakwaang, as well as mino
bimaatisiiwin. The life given by the Creator.
His
memorial remembered that courage and tenacity, Mushkooub refused to
go to the Vietnam war because “ that was not his war.” As well,
the treaties of 1837 and 1855 would recognize that the Ojibwe are a
nation, which signed peace and friendship treaties, with the United
States. Mushkooub joined with many other Native people to take over
of the BIA building in Washington, D.C. in 1972, the liberation of
Wounded Knee in 1973 and joined his father in protesting dumping of
military and toxic wastes on the shores of Gichi Gummi (Lake
Superior).
His
accolades are long and numerous, worthy of a bard’s words from the
old times: a former Mille Lacs Band Education Director, championship
ricer – bringing in 650 pounds of rice in one day – and defender
of land and water and way of life.
In some
ways, it is not surprising that two days after Mushkooub’s passing
the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the rights of
the Anishinaabeg to continue the way of life given to us by the
Creator. In reviewing a case called “Operation Square Hook,”
where White Earth and Leech Lake tribal citizens were arrested for
gillnetting and selling of fish off the Leech Lake Reservation.
The court
found, “The United States suggests no reason why the right to net
and sell fish would not be part of the usufructuary rights reserved
by the establishment of the Leech Lake Reservation in the 1855
treaty.” The context of the 1855 treaty establishing the Leech Lake
Reservation indicates that this ‘general rule’ applies. As the
Supreme Court noted in Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band, the silence
regarding usufructuary rights in the 1855 treaty and the negotiations
leading up to it suggest that the Chippewa Indians did not believe
they were relinquishing such rights … Historical sources indicate
that the Chippewa practiced such activities during the time period
when the reservation was established. Even if the 1837 treaty does
not apply, the rights it protects are relevant because in this
particular case the Chippewa would have understood similar broad
rights to apply on the Leech Lake Reservation. We therefore conclude
that the exclusive on reservation fishing rights of the Chippewa
Indians protect the rights to fish and to sell fish.”
Interesting,
in the timing of the release of the decision and that the decision
involves the 1855 Treaty. Robert Shimek, director of the White Earth
Land Recovery Project, applauded the court and noting that the Ojibwe
who signed that treaty “insured that the way of life of the
Anishinaabe could continue, because we would have access to our land
… For people to negotiate a treaty that would stand 160 years
later, and protect present day Anishinaabe is remarkable.” “That
treaty was in a foreign language, and for our ancestors to do that,
that was a great gift, to this generation,” attorney Frank Bibeau,
long-time friend of Mushkooub said. “It is apparent the state was
more interested in spending three years and hundreds of thousands of
dollars prosecuting Native people for exercising treaty rights by
taking fish by gillnet and then selling the fish, than working with
Anishinaabe in protecting the watershed of those fish in the long
run,” referring to recent efforts to prevent the Sandpiper crude
oil pipeline and Square Hook decisions, adding “our off-reservation
treaty harvesting rights include a natural, preemptive right to
protect our environment because we plan on our future generations
living here, as we always have, forever.”
A major
concern of Mushkooub was mining proposals. The Tamarack Mine Project
is in the same watershed as the Minisiwaaning, or Rice Lake/East Lake
Band of Anishinaabeg. The mining interests have leased 35,000 acres
of land, not far from Big Sandy and Round Lakes, Savanna Portage
State Park and the Grayling Wildlife Management Area.
A venture
of Talon Mining and Rio Tinto Zinc/Kennecott (the largest copper
mining company in the world), the Tamarack proposal has resulted in
some 124,700 feet or 23.7 miles, of drill core samples from the area.
Ironically, it was impossible to book a hotel room in the nearby town
of McGregor on the night of the wake, as the hotel was filled with
drilling contractors.
Geologists
estimate more than 10 million tons of mineable ore below. The
recovery ratio for copper is 0.16 percent, much smaller than the
average for other metals (4.5 percent). In other words, you need to
remove 1 billion tons of material to recover 1.6 tons of copper. The
only substance with a lower recovery rate is gold.
Talon
officials say the copper and other valuable minerals are roughly
1,000 to 1,500 feet below the surface and that the mine "will be
an underground mine, if it is able to get through Minnesota’s
exacting permitting process” – or more to the point – get past
the strict regulations that protect the state grain, wild rice,
sacred to the Anishinaabeg.
The mining
proposal would create sulfuric acid discharge into the very rice
beds, from which Mushkooub harvested his legendary 650 pounds. In a
move this February to override state regulations regarding sulfuric
acid, Minnesota Sens. Tomassoni, Saxhaug, Bakk and Ingebrigtsen
introduced S.F. 868. The bill would “[prohibit] the application of
wild rice water quality standards.”
Minnesota’s
water quality rule limiting sulfates to 10 milligrams per liter in
wild rice waters and was enacted in 1973 in order to protect natural
stands of wild rice. The proposed legislative change seems focused on
particularly the proposed Tamarack and PolyMet mines, both within
wild rice areas. Separately, the Enbridge Sandpiper line (now with a
second line proposed to adjoin it, with l.4 million barrels a day of
oil) goes through the same watershed.
In terms
of the law, it seems that burial within your traditional way of life,
should be recognized. And to be honest, it seems like 25 years is
long enough for a county with a high Native population to figure out
how to regulate tribal autopsies. It’s not like this dying is a new
thing . Dr. Tadd Johnson, at the University of Minnesota Duluth,
explains that things clearly need to be changed. “Under current
Minnesota law, the Medical Examiners have a great deal of authority.
Even after a court order was granted which ordered the Medical
Examiner to return the body of Mushkooub Aubid to his family (and
later in the week 24 year-old Autumn Martineau of Fond du Lac who
died in a car accident got a similar court order), the Medical
Examiner refused to return the bodies until the county attorney
intervened. In states such as New York, laws exist wherein if the
family of the decedent requests that an autopsy not be performed
because of religious reasons, the Medical Examiner complies,” Tadd
explains.
are exceptions built into the New York law (homicides, suspicion of
foul play, etc); however, the law at least allows the family to
object to an autopsy for religious freedom reasons. Certain faiths
(Orthodox Judaism, Hmong, Christian Scientists, Midewewin) do not
believe in desecrating the body by cutting into it after death. Some
of us believe a coalition of Native Americans and other faiths should
organize and get an amendment to the Minnesota law on autopsies to
honor these religious beliefs and let people be buried (and families
mourn) pursuant to their own traditions,” Tadd continued.
There is –
in the end – a conflict between world views and ways of life. Some
call it the white man paperwork: autopsy reports on deceased Indians,
permitting of projects that are known to damage the ecosystem. What
Mushkooub stood for is to be Anishinaabeg and perhaps his father’s
words of 30 years ago remind us all of what that means.
“We do
not have thousands upon thousands of dollars. We do not have great
mansions of beauty. We do not have priceless objects of art. We do
not lead a life of ease, nor do we live in luxury. We do not own the
land upon which we live. We do not have the basic things of life
which we are told are necessary to better ourselves. But I want to
tell you now that that we do not need these things What we need,
however, is what we already have. What we need has been provided to
us by the Great Spirit. We need to realize who we are and what we
stand for. We are the keepers of that which the Great Spirit has
given to us, that is our language, our culture, our drum societies,
our religion, and most of all our traditional way of life. We need to
be Anishinaabeg again.”
– George
Aubid, Egiwaateshkang