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MENOMINEE FORESTRY: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE Menominee Sustained-Yield Management: A Successful Land Ethic in Practice. M. Pecore. 1992. Journal of Forestry 90(1):12-16.
Start with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun and the trees will last forever.-Chief Oshkosh (1795-1858)
The Past
Twenty-four years ago, Marshall Pecore's article, based on a lecture given to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Society of American Foresters (SAF) student chapter, looked at the unique history of the Menominee people and the principles of sustainable forestry as practiced on the reservation to match the community's land ethic. The Tribe calls themselves "Maeqtekuahkíhkíw Kew Kanahwíhtahquaq," which translates to "The Forest Keepers," and they recognize that the forest must remain for their unborn children's children, a land ethic integral to Tribal identity.
The collectively maintained 235,560-acre reservation has 87% of its land under sustained yield forestry today and is an unfragmented remnant of the prehistoric Lake States forest, which has been greatly reduced (Schabel and Pecore 1997). The Tribe recognized that their future depended on the forest and embarked on a path ofsustained yield that avoided forest exploitation and preserved the Tribe's existence (Figure 1). The Tribe resisted the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 (and dozens of other related federal initiatives to obtain control of the forest) and survived federal termination from 1954 to 1973 (i.e., loss of sovereignty and treaty rights). The forest was largely protected from the destructive lumbering of the timber barons, ominous threats of wildfires on cutover lands, stabs at agriculture on submarginal land that much of Upper Midwest endured from the 1870s to 1930s, and unrestrained residential and other modern development.
Before European contact, the Tribe's ancestral land was estimated to cover current day Wisconsin and parts of Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, and Illinois (Joan Delabreau, Tribal Chair, pers. comm.). Through a series of seven treaties with the US Government beginning in 1831, the Tribe had its land base reduced to its current size, but this included an important portion oftheir ancestral land. Tribal members have the sole use and occupancy rights to the...