The Ottawa tribe of Oklahoma has filed suit in federal court, claiming it still owns fishing rights in Lake Erie… but that’s prompting natural resources officials to worry about the prospect of over-fishing in the lake. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
Transcript
The Ottawa tribe of Oklahoma has filed suit in federal court,
claiming it still owns fishing rights in Lake Erie, but that’s
prompting natural resources officials to worry about the prospect of
over-fishing in the lake. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill
Cohen reports.
Members of the Ottawa tribe say a 200-year-old treaty gave them fishing
rights, but Ohio officials who regulate fishing are hoping the tribe
doesn’t win its lawsuit.
They say, since the tribe is a sovereign nation,
the Native Americans would not have to abide by state limits on fish
catches, and that could ruin the business of the commercial fishing
companies that rely on the lake.
The Ottawa’s lawyer, Dick Rogovin, says the state could compensate.
“If these tribes take a lot of fish out of the water, I think the state’s
got to put fish back in. That’s their obligation: to supply fish for
everybody else.”
Some Native American tribes do have fishing rights in other parts of the
Great Lakes, but court agreements between the tribes and the states put
limits on the catch of fish in those areas.
For the GLRC, I’m Bill Cohen.