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Sylvia Cloud, Bad River elder and fourth degree midewikwe, or practitioner of Midewiwin, the ancient Anishinaabe spiritual practice, recently addressed the Bad River Tribal Council to tell them of the desecration of the oldest grave sites on Madeline Island. The Town of La Pointe had clearcut the area, then bulldozed roadways and camper sites, expanding the existing town park campground onto what Cloud knows to be the first village site formed by the Anishinaabeg people who migrated from the East at least 500 years ago. She told the Council she had talked to the La Pointe Town Board last September about the importance of respecting the historic space. Council members expressed surprise and responded with the intention to investigate.

Since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or NAGPRA was passed in 1990, desecrating or disturbing tribal dead is held to be an infringement of native religious rights. It was only 12 years prior to this legislation, that in 1978 and under US President Jimmy Carter, native people were able to practice their religions openly. For the previous 100 years, native religious practices were illegal. Cloud recalls performing religious ceremonies with her family as a child on Madeline Island, and puzzling why they had to stop and whisper the songs when white people came around. Native drums and dances could only be offered as entertainment at public events.

In an interview, La Pointe Town Administrator, Peter Clark, said the town has an overarching sensitivity in doing everything properly and that a dig was done on the site. “We can only deal with facts and evidence,” he stammered. “There were no beads, no moccasins. You mean to say it all disappeared?”

Clark also contradicted Cloud’s assertion that burial mounds exist nearby. The elder, herself tutored by Midewiwin elders, maintains the original graves were shallow, and that artifacts, including remains, would have returned to the earth after many centuries. She points out that even current residents of the island privately hold grave items as do museums in Madison, Milwaukee and elsewhere. Native graves were desecrated until and even after it was made illegal to do so.

The controversial site contains wetlands which entailed the oversight of the Army Corps of Engineers. Clark said that permits were required and specifications followed to the letter.  However, Bill Sande, from the Army Corps of Engineers’ regulatory field office in Hayward, said that La Pointe began work on the campground expansion before applying for permits, adding “it was a wreck of a project from the get-go.” Sande was made project manager only this year, and didn’t know why La Pointe started work before permits were applied for.


Clark emphasized how aggressive the town has been to ensure cooperation and collaboration with the tribes and that even in 1875 the town board voted to use $300 to care for native American grave sites. He clarified that those sites were in a Christian graveyard.
Cloud, on the other hand, described how the Catholic Church in the 1960’s sold graveyard land so the existing La Pointe marina could be built. At that time, the bones were trucked to a dump. Since then she and others have camped out to protect her ancestors’ remains. Her teacher, Joe Shebayash, told her of the ancient village across from the town park where the Midewiwin was brought to the people, and said there was a cemetery there. Cloud, whose great-great grandfather, Anakwad, was a signer of the Treaty of 1854, has put prayer flags at the site, but development has begun.