Save Lake Mille Lacs Association.

On July 29, 1837 the United States entered into a treaty with several bands of Chippewa Indians. Under the terms of the treaty the Indians ceded the northern one-third of present-day Wisconsin and 3,061,501 acres of land in what would later become Minnesota to the United States, and the United States guaranteed to the Indians certain hunting, fishing, and gathering rights on the ceded land.

In August 1990 the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians and several of its members filed suit in the Federal District Court for the District of Minnesota against the State of Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and various state officers seeking, among other things, a declaratory judgment that they retained their usufructuary rights (the right to hunt, fish, and gather on the ceded lands) under the 1837 treaty, and an injunction to prevent the State's interference with those rights. The United States intervened as a plaintiff in the suit; nine counties and six private landowners intervened as defendants. The lawsuit involved treaty rights on lands located in Crow Wing, Aitkin, Pine, Chisago, Anoka, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Sherburne, Benton, and Morrison counties. Included in this tract is Lake Mille Lacs, Minnesota's premier walleye fishing lake.

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