With a land dispute deadlocked, tribe blocks streets
LAC DU FLAMBEAU, WIS. >>
The yellow barricades and chained-together concrete blocks went up late last month, cutting off dozens of houses from roads on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in northern Wisconsin, where soaring evergreens and the papery bark of birch trees punctuate the skyline.
To tribal leaders, who for years tried and failed to negotiate payments for portions of those streets that cross their property, the blockades were an assertion of sovereignty, a statement that they would defend tribal land and demand respect.
To the homeowners on the wrong side of the roadblocks, many of them white, the barricades were a startling disruption to nearly every aspect of their routines, a literal barrier to getting to work or running errands.
With the tribe seeking $20 million to resolve the dispute over the four snowpacked back roads, residents have hunkered down, left town or hiked across frozen lakes to reach their cars and jobs. The standoff has prompted a visit from Wisconsin’s governor and statements of concern from members of Congress.
But even as a standingroom-only crowd packed a public meeting Wednesday, the barricades have remained and conversations among the town government, two title companies and the tribe have not yielded a deal.
“Imagine if someone built a road through your property without your permission to access land on the other side of your property,” President John Johnson Sr. of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians said in a statement after the roadblocks went up. “A title company then tells your neighbor they are guaranteed access forever to their property through your land over the illegally built road. How would you feel about it?”
The dispute in Wisconsin’s Northwoods is, at its most basic level, about trespassing and property rights. But it is rooted in generations of U.S. policy toward Native Americans, whose lands were whittled down to small reservations, portions of which were then privatized and sold to nonmembers.
Native American tribes, which are recognized by the federal government as sovereign nations, have repeatedly invoked that status during property disputes in recent years, including in debates over a highway through Seneca Nation lands in New York, over COVID-19 checkpoints on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota and over a proposed U.S.Mexico border wall on Tohono O’odham lands in Arizona.
In Wisconsin, several of the marooned neighbors said they respected the tribe, recognized historical wrongs to Native Americans and did not dispute tribal ownership of portions of the roads. But they stressed that their homes are not on tribal property.
“It’s not only going to happen in this state, it’s going to continue to happen, and somebody needs to step in and try to help,” said Marsha Panfil, who lives behind a barricade and on several recent days has not been able to open the restaurant she runs with her partner. “We’re not responsible for taking land away from people. We came here to live in our little piece of the United States of America.”
Dave Miess, a photographer whose home is also cut off from the road system, said he and his wife had no idea that the road use was contested until after they bought their property about three years ago.
“We believe that the tribe should be compensated for the easements on those roads — we have absolutely no issue with that whatsoever,” said Miess, who left a vehicle with a neighbor on the other side of a frozen lake before the barricades were placed, and who hauled his groceries across the ice using children’s sleds. “I think for us as the homeowners, we just all feel like we’re kind of pawns in all of this.”
Johnson made clear that the tribe’s complaint was not with the individual residents, but rather with the Town of Lac du Flambeau’s government, whose territory overlaps with the tribe’s and whose workers have maintained those roads, and with two title companies that insure properties beyond the barriers.
Johnson, who along with other tribal leaders did not agree to be interviewed, also faulted the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which he said for years ignored questions from tribal leaders and showed an “utter lack of recognition” of the tribe’s status as a sovereign nation. Officials with the bureau also did not agree to an interview.
Angelique EagleWoman, director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota, said the Lac du Flambeau leaders were on solid legal ground.
“The story of tribal nations in the United States is one of land dispossession: Over and over again, attempts are made to decrease the tribal land base, and it places tribal leaders in the position of continually defending whatever still remains of the tribal land base,” she said.
The details of the Wisconsin dispute are complicated. Decades ago, when developers built homes for nonmembers of the tribe on private land along some of the reservation’s 260 lakes, they secured right of way easements allowing roads to the homes to pass over tribal ground. The agreements for the four roads now blockaded expired more than a decade ago, officials said, and the tribe said it has been trying to negotiate an agreement for years. Reaching a new deal involves input from the town and from two title companies, Chicago Title Insurance Co. and First American Title Insurance Co., with clients behind the roadblocks.
An estimated 65 families own property affected by the closures, a lawyer involved in the negotiations said. Town officials did not know how many people were stuck because the roads include a mix of full-time residences and vacation properties primarily used during the summer.
Bob Hanson, an elected supervisor for the Town of Lac du Flambeau, said long-strained communication and valid feelings of disrespect by tribal officials had made solving the road issue more difficult. The town government, he said, had limited finances.
“My perception is that they’re simply looking for respect,” Hanson said of the tribe. “They want their government to be respected as a valid and effective government. Sometimes that happens — sometimes it does — but often, I think they end up feeling like they’re getting no respect.”
Bridget M. Hubing, a lawyer retained by the title companies for many of the residents, said her clients had tried to reach a settlement but that the $20 million the tribe was seeking far exceeded past precedent. First American Title said in a statement that it had made a “good faith offer on behalf of our insured homeowners to the tribe” and sought mediation.
The tribe said in its own statement that its price included compensation for road use in the years since the prior easements expired, as well as its legal representation during the long negotiations.