Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians
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The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians are a United States federally recognized Native American tribal entity. Robert Kewaygoshkum is the current chairman of the Tribal Council whose offices are in Peshawbestown, Michigan and where it operates the Leelanau Sands Casino and the Grand Traverse Resort & Casino.
Names
Referring to themselves as the Anishnabek or Three Fires Confederacy, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is comprised of the Odawa (Ottawa), the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and Bodowadomi (Pottawatomi) people.Recognition
Under the Indian Reorganization Act, they applied for federal recognition in 1934 and 1943 and were denied. However, in 1978 Dodie Harris Chambers led an effort for recognition and on May 27, 1980 the tribe was formally recognized.Tribal History
The Band was officially recognized as an Indian Tribe on May 27, 1980, under the provisions of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Members descended from the various Ottawa, Pokagon and Chippewa tribal members from northern Michigan.The Tribe's government includes a governing body consisting of a Tribal chair and six other Tribal Council members, elected by the Grand Traverse Band membership. The Band has the programming, fiscal and administrative authority. The Council also appoints judicial officers that decide criminal, family and civil matters in conjunction with the state court.
The water resources within the 1855 reservation area include Grand Traverse Bay, the eastern shore of Michigan, Lake Leelanau, Elk Lake, and their watersheds. Other natural resources of importance include undeveloped forested parcels and areas of traditional and cultural hunting, fishing and plant gathering.
The Grand Traverse Band's Natural Resources Department is made up of a department manager, game wardens, Great Lakes fishery biologists and technician, fish and wildlife biologists and technician, environmental and water quality staff, and an office manager.
The Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi Indians each originated from the Michigan area and tribal members have reservation lands in different parts of the state:
The Ottawa 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 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 1855 and created an Ottawa/Chippewa nation, but this was a legal fiction inasmuch as the two tribes were unrelated.
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 created.Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians
The Potawatomi are Algonquian-speaking people who occupied the Great Lakes region from prehistoric times through the early 1800’s. Forced west by settlement, the Mission Potawatomi lived on a reserve in Kansas from 1838 and 1861. In the early 1870’s, most Potawatomi resettled in Indian Territory, presently Oklahoma. From there, migrations generally headed westward but the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians relocated to the Michigan area, and has 2,700 members in a ten county service area in southwestern Michigan and northwestern Indiana.Tribal boundaries
The territory of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is the Grand Traverse Reservation, as established by United States Secretary of the Interior on January 6, 1984 and includes lands acquired by the Band. The Grand Traverse Band's Treaty Ceded Territories from the 1836 Treaty covers an area in a line from the Grand River to the Alpena area north and the eastern portion of the upper peninsula from the Chocolay River east. The Reservation covers most of Leelanau County, Michigan and a portion of Antrim County, Michigan across Grand Traverse Bay. The present day, main Reservation and six-county service area consists of Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Grand Traverse and Manistee counties. The Band's federal land base is approximately 1,100 acres dispersed throughout the service area with 3,985 members and 1,610 residing in the area.External links
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