In the late 1980s, thousands of people lined the boat landings of northern Wisconsin to scream at Ojibwe fishermen.

The Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa had won the right to spearfish walleye during spawning season — a practice their ancestors had carried out for centuries, reaffirmed by the treaties of 1837 and 1842, upheld by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in 1987. The law was settled. The boat landings were not.

Protesters threw rocks. Fired slingshots. Circled spearfishing boats at high speed, trying to capsize them. They wore shirts that read “Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian.” They hung effigies. They fired gunshots. They set off pipe bombs. At Butternut Lake in 1988, local police refused to help; state game wardens drove a hundred miles from Superior to extract the fishermen. By 1989, Governor Tommy Thompson had activated the Division of Emergency Government. Police stood three deep at boat landings in riot gear, shields up, sticks out.

The argument was always the same: the Indians are killing all the fish.

Over twenty years of joint biological research — federal, state, and tribal scientists working together under the framework the Voigt Decision required — the data came in. Tribal harvest accounted for 3% of total walleye in treaty territory. Only 9% of that harvest was female. The walleye populations were fine. The violence at the boat landings was never about fish. It was about who had the right to be on the water.

That was 1991. This is 2026.

The fish are actually dying now.

On April 16, 2026, the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Council declared a state of emergency over walleye and muskellunge populations in 19 reservation lakes. The tribe restricted harvesting of those two species by non-members. Not a total fishing ban — bass and pike remained open, catch-and-release remained open. The resolution targeted removal of two species the tribe’s own data showed were in critical decline. The tribe also banned forward-facing sonar use by non-members on all reservation lakes, citing its role in accelerating overharvest.

Tribal President John Johnson Sr. said: “When fish populations collapse, we have not only the right but the responsibility to act.”

The tribe had evidence the method works. In 2022, the band closed Flambeau Lake to non-tribal walleye and musky harvesting. The state urged anglers to respect the request. By 2025, walleye populations on that lake had risen from 0.2 fish per acre to 3.1 — a fifteen-fold increase in three years. No state funding. No legislative action. Just the tribe closing one lake and letting the biology recover.

This time, the state sued.

Thirteen days after the tribe’s emergency declaration, Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul filed a federal lawsuit arguing the state holds exclusive authority to regulate non-tribal fishing on navigable waters — even waters within the boundaries of the reservation. U.S. District Judge William Conley issued a temporary restraining order on May 1, the day before the inland fishing opener. The tribe’s conservation measures were blocked before a single season under the new rules could begin.

Here is the part that requires you to hold two facts in your head at once.

The same state that sued the tribe to keep reservation lakes open to non-tribal harvest had, weeks earlier, announced it was closing the Osceola fish hatchery, cutting walleye stocking by 45%, and cutting musky stocking by 70% — because the legislature hadn’t approved $16 million in spending authority. License fees flat since 2005. Costs rising. Hatcheries shutting down.

The tribe runs its own hatchery. Without state funding. It has stocked over 415 million walleye in thirty years. Its biologists collected 59.6 million walleye eggs in the most recent season; 56% survived. On Pokegama Lake and White Sand Lake, tribal biologists found only three adult muskies and produced fewer than 2,000 young fish.

Vice President George Thompson put it plainly: “Over the past twenty years, Wisconsin DNR has closed hatcheries, reduced walleye stocking by 45 percent, reduced muskie stocking by 70 percent.”

The state’s response to declining fish populations was to defund the infrastructure that maintains them. The tribe’s response was to restrict harvest on its own land. The state sued the tribe.

At a three-hour hearing on May 29, attorneys for the Evers administration argued that legal precedent — the 1983 Baker case, the Voigt framework — gives Wisconsin exclusive regulatory authority over non-tribal fishing, even on reservation waters. The tribe’s attorneys invoked Montana v. United States, arguing that catastrophic resource decline triggers an exception to state authority. Judge Conley issued no ruling. He said the tribe lacked sufficient evidence to prove the decline. He asked why the parties hadn’t tried to collaborate first.

The Voigt Decision does require collaboration. Both parties acknowledge this. For decades, they did collaborate — on off-reservation management. But the tribe’s spokesperson explained why the data wasn’t shared publicly this time: “In the past, data was manipulated and weaponized against us.”

That sentence carries forty years.

In the 1980s, the tribe’s legal right to fish was met with pipe bombs. In 2026, the tribe’s attempt to stop fishing is met with a restraining order. The accusation in 1988 was that Indigenous fishermen were destroying the resource. The evidence showed they weren’t. The crisis in 2026 is that the resource is actually being destroyed. The tribe has evidence its approach works. The state blocked the approach, offered no alternative conservation plan of its own, and went to court.

Governor Evers, in his statement, cited concern for “outstanding safety concerns caused by generations of tension and violence that have surrounded Tribal rights and fishing on these lands for centuries.” Wisconsin created an anti-harassment statute during the Walleye Wars specifically because of the violence against Ojibwe fishermen. The governor now invokes that same history — the history of violence against the tribe — as justification for overriding the tribe’s conservation authority.

The restraining order is still in effect. The walleye season is open. Non-tribal anglers are harvesting on all 19 lakes under state regulations while the court decides whether the tribe has the right to protect the fish on its own reservation.

DNR and Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission biologists agree that walleye populations are declining statewide — not just on reservation lakes. The tribe proved, on one lake, that restricting harvest reverses the decline. Fifteen-fold in three years. On its own water, with its own hatchery, with its own biologists.

The court wants more evidence. The restraining order ensures the harvest continues while they wait for it.

In Ojibwe, walleye is ogaa. Muskellunge is maashkinoozhe. President Johnson called the walleye “a clan relative, a traditional food source, and central to our way of life.” The word “relative” is doing work there that “resource” cannot.

You don’t file a restraining order against someone protecting a relative. Unless you don’t recognize the relationship.

The people who were accused of killing the fish weren’t. The people who are trying to save the fish can’t. The restraining order restrains the conservation. The harvest has no restraining order.

The fish don’t know who has jurisdiction.

// NEON BLOOD

Sources: ICT News, PBS Wisconsin, Wisconsin Law Journal, WJFW, WXPR, Outdoor Life, WPR, Wikipedia: Wisconsin Walleye War, Wausau Pilot & Review