our nicknames, Archive, Moby Dick, Savage Love, Gichi Noodin, Hole in the Storm, Waasese, and Justice Molly Crèche.
The Constitution of the White Earth Nation, and other native nations, were denatured by the plenary abrogation of the entente and treaties. The territorial domain of native sovereignty had been erased, and the precise constitutional prohibition of banishment was not enforceable.
Seven natives resisted the demise of governance, but we were immediately renounced and rebuked as extremists and exiled. The constitution was our only native trace of sovereignty, at the time, so we resorted to a diplomatic strategy of continental native liberty provided by the great and everlasting peace treaty with New France.
Forty native nations were signatories to La Grande Paix de Montréal in 1701, and for about sixty years the treaty provided peace for natives, fur traders, and the citizens of New France. The exiles were eager to double back with stories of earlier treaties and continental liberty because our native constitutional governance had been denied by the plenary power of the United States Congress.
The Great Peace of Montréal recognized by name and formal negotiations, empire cues, signatures, and totemic marks the unmistakable sovereignty of native nations in New France, New England, and the Great Lakes.
Hole in the Storm seemed to envision scenes of native exile, but the situation of our banishment was not the same as Dogroy Beaulieu or the renunciation of the spectacular triptych. The Casino Whalers on a Sea of Sovereignty portrayed the mighty motion of waves, the sleaze of casino overseers, grotesque gamers over slot machines, and the catastrophe of native sovereignty.
The abrogation of the reservation treaty, rescission of the constitution and native governance, and our exile that autumn resulted in an escape cruise on the Baron of Patronia, that marvelous houseboat of survivance and native sovereignty. We became the new native expatriates of continental liberty on Lake of the Woods.
Justice Molly Crèche, Moby Dick, Savage Love, and the other exiles told memorable treaty tales, the tease and ironies of princely names, workaday mockery, and the giveaway contingencies of government. Federal treaties were always hazy but the stories of the exiles were buoyant, a mirage of birthrights, bogus advances of civilization, and the steady comic teases and parodies of federal agents for more than a century. The new treaty tales were easily derived from the new regime and obscure duties of the endorsement sectors.
Waasese was an innovative storier with lasers, those beams, shimmers, and emission of radiation but not words or paint. She created incredible holoscenes, the precise projection of light, the haunted scenes and figures over the reservations, lakes, and cities. Most of the laser images were familiar, George Washington, Geronimo, Mae West, John Wayne, Sitting Bull, Bob Dylan, and Neighbor Smithy who wore a Vine Deloria Peace Medal, for instance, were seen several times in natural motion with Diane Glancy, Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, George Morrison, David Bradley, and many other native writers and painters over the White Foxy Casino.
Waasese earned her nickname, a flash of lightning, in a laser laboratory as a graduate student, and created a laser scene of presidents and prominent natives that reached over the Mississippi River near the University of Minnesota. The holoscenes were in motion, faded, and then vanished in the night sky.
Waasese was constantly teased, of course, and given several nicknames, Tree House, Laser Carpenter, Crazy Beam, Chicago, Timber Maven, and at last the native word Waasese. The Chicago nickname was a historical reference to the reservation white pine that had been cut to build the city. Some natives converted that nickname to zhingwaak, white pine, but Waasese, a wild flash of lightning, outlasted the other nicknames.
Chewy Browne, a native soprano in her nineties, a truly catchy treaty storier, was honored as a senior exile on the very night of our departure from a boat dock near the ruins of the Seven Clans Casino in Warroad, Minnesota. Chewy chanted the names of her nine fancy chickens that night, and then told stories about how the chickens had scurried and crapped on the roulette tables and outsmarted the security agents with elusive clucks, magical cackles, and crow boasts in the casino.
Native creation stories were visionary, never the same as treaty tales. The contrasts of creation, and the totemic union of animals were never counted down to the territorial metes and bounds of separatist reservations and the ruse of sovereignty. Fancy chickens, however, were both creation and treaty stories, and memorable scenes at the casino.
Chewy was a shaman with fancy chickens.
Justice Molly Crèche, a prudent storier of creatures and treaties, counted ancient natives by diseases, grieved over the agony of pared animals in the wild fur trade, and created a poignant metes and bounds of lethal outpost pathogens, that decimation of natives, and, at the same time, the ghastly estates of peltry.
“Natives once envisioned totemic associations, bears, wolves, sandhill cranes, but our ancestors were never the honorable escorts of animals in the fur trade. We are the storiers of conscience, cast aside, and yet natives must continue to nurture totemic associations, the auras, spirits, and shadows of animals,” declared Justice Molly Crèche.
Homer Drayn, vice chancellor of the William Warren Community College, announced in a formal statement, “Justice Crèche might have become a high court justice, but the hearsay of wild sex with animals and conversion of the tribal court to beaver rights and bear necrostories regrettably ended an eminent judicial career.”
Drayn was an edgy native lawyer and constant rival to serve on the constitutional court. He had actually initiated the vicious rumors that Justice Crèche was having sex with mongrels and wild animals.
“Justice Molly Crèche always honored the standing of beaver, bear, moles, gypsy moths, juncos, spiders, and little brown bats in court,” chanted Moby Dick.
“Crèche was right, she was always right about the rights of animals and their day in court,” said Gichi Noodin, the steady voice of Panic Radio. “The trouble was, most natives worried more about the casino than about totems, mongrels, or fur trade animals, and the honorable justice was burdened with more cases and testimony about casino sleeve dogs than abandoned and abused children.”
The White Earth Reservation was created by treaty on March 19, 1867. Minnesota had been a state for almost nine years when the federal government carved out a section of woodland and lakes for a reservation. That thorny episode of state separatism has never been a pleasurable source of native memories or stories, and for more than a century the treaty has never been a reliable warranty, never a true celebration of democracy, only a mockery of sovereignty and continental liberty.
Most natives remember the treaty tales and frightful situations when entire families were separated from their customary haunts, homes, and ventures, and relocated elsewhere on a federal reservation. The native resistance to separatism and treaty relocation was hardly recorded in national archives or state histories. The chronicles most celebrated were about the romance of the ancient fur trade, and favored timber barons who carried away the red and white pine on the White Earth Reservation.
Yet, in the face of constant government betrayals and crafty policies, natives endured and created an extraordinary democratic constitution, one of the prominent constitutions of the modern world, and resolved the devious mandates and feudal cache of saintly blood that was touted as the authentic trace and determination of native identities. Now, after two decades of autonomous governance our native state and constitution has been terminated, and the very protectors of the revered charter were exiled with a cast aside constitution.
The Constitution of the White Earth Nation, approved by a referendum of native citizens about twenty years ago, proclaims in the preamble that the Anishinaabe were the successors of a great tradition of continental liberty,
