"The highly publicized Ojibwe Indian "fish-off" on Lake Bemidji this spring has emboldened members of another Minnesota tribe to exercise what they believe to be their fishing rights.

A small number of Dakota activists say they plan to ignore state law and cast their nets in a Minneapolis lake as early as next summer.

Chris Mato Nunpa and his buddies want to repeat their effort of two summers ago, when they put on their swim trunks and set a gill net in the waters of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Another friend played drums along the shore, as captured in a video on YouTube.

Joggers stopped to watch. After all, a crime was being committed: Fishing with a net is illegal. Mato Nunpa was hopeful that a citation would follow.

"Our intention was to get arrested, get ticketed, and then to appear in court, and use the Treaty of 1805 as our legal defense," he said. "But nobody came."

He said a ponytailed park police officer even smiled and waved to the group as he glided by on his bicycle.

But Mato Nunpa, a retired professor of Dakota studies at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, said he's encouraged by the treaty-rights demonstration in Bemidji this May. That fish-off, carried out a day before the official fishing season began, made front-page news across the state."

Get the Story:
Dakota activists plan to test treaty rights in Minneapolis (Minnesota Public Radio 7/16)

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