In 1900, the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians lost their land and rightful place as a sovereign nation. Today, with input from other Native voices, an Ojibwe artist highlights the tribe’s history and current bid for federal reaffirmation in an exhibition at the U-M Museum of Art.
by Kashona Notah-Stevens
Featured artwork by Andrea Carlson
The stars form the same constellations that tribal members might have looked up at, unaware that their lives would soon change forever, unaware that they would soon be driven from their homes. Later called the Burt Lake Burn-Out, the forced relocation facilitated the effective termination of the Burt Lake Band as a federally recognized people. But that fateful day was not the end.
“Sky in the Morning Hours of Binaakwiiwi-giizis 15, 1900” is currently up at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) as part of the exhibition Future Cache, a commissioned art show that requires the audience to acknowledge something irrefutable: that the Burt Lake Band, like many Native nations, lives on in the face of attempted erasure.
Future Cache reminds its audience that U-M is also inextricably connected to the Burt Lake Band because of land. Although the U-M Biological Station was established after the Burn-Out, the university now owns large tracts of the tribe’s ancestral homeland. In addition, much of the Burt Lake Band’s former reservation, also known as “Indian Reserved” land, was obtained in 1987 to protect it from logging in a joint effort with the Little Traverse Conservancy.
Andrea Carlson, who is from the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, is the artist behind Future Cache. In conversation with the Burt Lake Band, the U-M Native community, and other university partners, she chose to use her platform to show that the band is not defined by their trauma and land-loss, but by their strength in the face of it. What happens next for the band remains to be seen, but at the very least, Carlson has given U-M and LSA the gift of Indigenous insight.
Matthew Fletcher, a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, is an LSA professor of American culture and the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law. He says that federal recognition means everything to tribes; without it, they are not seen as self-governing sovereign nations.
Fletcher is particularly moved by the work that Carlson has done to bring the tribe’s story to a wider audience. Fletcher’s wife, Wenona T. Singel, is an associate professor of law and director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center at Michigan State. She is a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians but also descends from the Burt Lake Band. “We went to see [the exhibit] together,” recalls Fletcher. “It was emotionally impactful on both of us.”
In 2017, with support from Joseph P. Gone of the Gros Ventre Tribe of Montana, the former director of Native American studies at U-M, Petoskey wrote a letter to university administrators requesting that there be full acknowledgment of the Burt Lake Band’s history in the form of curriculum development. Petoskey requested that U-M work toward building better relationships with Michigan tribes, particularly the descendants of the Burt Lake Band. He also inquired into the specifics of the university’s ownership and acquisition of land at the Biological Station.
![An image of Day Maker, a painting by Andrea Carlson. Two triangles now face away from each other, dividing the canvas into six sections. The top triangle is peach in color. In orange lettering, the words “Ka Ji Go We,” and the English translation of Day Maker, are written prominently. The bottom triangle is mostly gray and reminiscent of water at Burt Lake. A wavy line of blue cuts across the line that connects the two triangles, creating open space for a solid, unpatterned, yellowish pale green. Straight lines fill the four outward facing triangles in the background. The lines are brown, black, white, blue, and a yellowish pale green. To the left of the painting, on a white background, Professor Matthew Fletcher quoted in gray text: “The [Burt Lake Band’s] treaty was never abrogated.”](https://lsa.umich.edu/content/michigan-lsa/en/news-events/lsa-magazine/Spring-2023/a-dream-of-fundamental-justice/jcr:content/gridpar/lsa_gridwrapper_2477_2077885775/responsivegrid/responsivegrid/image_293863378_copy.transform/none/image.png)
“Art can speak in ways that the law and policy cannot,” says Petoskey. “I think creative work is always a key piece to advancing tribal causes.” Petoskey says that art often builds on, and can even lead, some of the most important legal conversations within Indian Country. “[Andrea Carlson] wanted to talk to people who had already done work in the area because she was invited to provide the exhibit. She felt like she needed to get information from the advocates on the ground.”
Alphonse Pitawanakwat, who is from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, is an Ojibwe language instructor in the Department of American Culture at LSA and a highly respected member of the U-M Native community. During the Future Cache opening, he gave opening remarks and a land acknowledgment to an audience that included Burt Lake Band tribal members. He spoke in Anishinaabemowin, his first language.
Pitawanakwat says that Carlson’s work is important in bringing what happened to light. He also remembers communicating with Petoskey when the then-first-year law student wrote the original letter to administrators in 2017. “I really didn’t think it would take a foothold,” says Pitawanakwat. “But anything that needs to come out, should come out now. We can’t go by other people’s feelings. We have to go by facts.” Pitawanakwat says that there may be people on campus who do not like to hear what happened, but he believes that Anishinaabe history, like that of the Burt Lake Band, should be required learning for all U-M students in their first year.
Andrea Carlson’s I’ll Cut a Hole (left) and Future Cache (right), both 2022, oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, marker, and graphite on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
The Long Walk and the Trail of Tears are often referenced as egregious examples of forced Native relocation, but many people are not aware of what happened in Michigan in 1900.
On October 15, 1900, the Burt Lake Band lost their reservation land base as well as a government-to-government relationship with the United States. The band’s land was illegally seized by a local militia that burned down their homes. Tribal members—mostly women, children, and elders, since the band’s men had left for the day—were forced to sit atop a few of their belongings in front of their houses and watch as a land speculator, with support from a sheriff, his deputies, and locals, doused tribal homes in kerosene and burned the community to the ground, sparing nothing but the church.
It was pouring rain, leading to some members getting pneumonia and a beloved elder passing away. The Burt Lake Band was then forced to march out of their treaty-protected reservation and find refuge wherever they could. To remain close to their homeland, the core of the community later reconstituted on nearby Indian Trail (now Indian Road), where relatives resided, and the tribe remains today.
Bruce Hamlin, the tribal chairman of the Burt Lake Band, says that attending the opening night of Future Cache was “surreal,” and he was awed by Carlson’s creation. “It was such an impressive piece of work. I was a bit blown away at first just to hear about it.” Hamlin is hopeful for more collaboration with the university and other partners in the future but is also grateful for what Future Cache has done for the tribe. “The Burt Lake Band’s story has never received this kind of exposure,” he says.
The exhibition also positions the declaration “You are on Anishinaabe land” on central campus, a reminder that Ann Arbor is Anishinaabe ancestral territory with tens of thousands of years of Native history compared to the 215 years since the Treaty of Detroit was signed and Ann Arbor was ceded to the U.S. government for 1.2 cents per acre, the equivalent of about 26 cents per acre today. Anishinaabe signatories were also promised annuities to be paid in perpetuity, but that was not followed through on. The prominent words are unmissable from all angles within the UMMA gallery space and are also translated into Anishinaabemowin.
Andrea Wilkerson, who is from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and received her A.B. in international studies from LSA in 2012, is a program manager for the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs (MESA). In her position, she works directly with the Native American Student Association (NASA) as their liaison and advisor. Wilkerson helped bring the Burt Lake Band to campus and facilitated talks with university partners to support Carlson’s conversations with the U-M community preceding the exhibition’s opening.
“It was apparent right from the start that Andrea Carlson was being really intentional,” says Wilkerson. “It was meant to be ongoing, longer-term engagement. When Andrea came to town in October, a small group of students, alums, and community [members] were able to meet with her in the gallery and have subsequently had opportunities to meet with Burt Lake tribal council and members.”
NASA has worked with the Burt Lake Band in other capacities, too. Wilkerson says that in addition to hosting the band for a #LandBack and sustainability panel in 2021, NASA visited the tribe’s healing garden, a recent collaboration between the Burt Lake Band and landscape designer Eva Roos, who holds degrees from the U-M School of Environment and Sustainability and Stamps School of Art and Design.
For Wilkerson, Future Cache is an important part of educating people affiliated with U-M and Ann Arbor. “I think it’s exciting that there is this ongoing opportunity for programming and community engagement. To see the big words You are on Anishinaabe land at UMMA, right off State Street, right across from the student union, is really powerful.”
Friess met Carlson while working on Watershed, a previous exhibition, when the vertical gallery came up for rotation. “There was this kismet of people talking about Andrea and what we could do that was visually impactful,” says Friess. “It came together when we brought her on site to see the space, and we just sort of talked through what she wanted to feature in the show, which was the story of the Burt Lake Band.”
“This story belongs to Burt Lake … Not only am I a guest, but they didn’t ask for me. So there was a lot of checking in for consent.”
—ARTIST ANDREA CARLSON
Ultimately Carlson’s choices and navigation of museum partnerships were meant to embolden a particular people. “This story belongs to Burt Lake,” she says. “That’s how I approached it. Not only am I a guest, but they didn’t ask for me. So there was a lot of checking in for consent.” Carlson offers advice for artists who might have the opportunity to work with museums and other institutions: “I would say to other artists that would pursue work like this, the truth-finding type of artwork or commission: don’t rush. The ideas were unfolding as I gained more familiarity with the story and people. I listened to band members and what they were prioritizing.”
“This wasn’t to take the place of any commitments that the school has to make when it comes to the Burt Lake people,” says Carlson. “That has to be taken on by leadership at the university, not by a guest artist.”
Petoskey believes that federal recognition is necessary for true healing and reconciliation on a national level. “I think it is the just thing to do, because the band itself has this horrible history, where they had their homelands, and histories, and stories, ripped out from under them.” An Anishinaabe leader and advocate, Petoskey references the idea of Indigenous kinship. “At the most basic level, it’s just a recognition of that story—that it mattered, that the people at Burt Lake continue to matter and exist. They are part of the broader fabric of what it means to be Indigenous, and what it means to be Anishinaabe.”
Future Cache will be up in UMMA’s vertical gallery space until June 1, 2024, telling that story. Beautiful art will continue to exist in UMMA’s most trafficked area, and the Anishinaabe language will continue to whisper from the walls. At the same time, Hamlin says, the Burt Lake Band will continue to work toward their dream of attaining a form of fundamental justice: federal reaffirmation.
Kashona Notah-Stevens is Iñupiaq, a member of the Native Village of Kotzebue, and a NANA Regional Corporation tribal shareholder. He was additionally raised since birth within a Diné family through his adoptive father, a proud member of the Navajo Nation. He holds professional affiliations with the Native American Journalists Association, the National Congress of American Indians, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.