Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians
Traditional Territory
South shore of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin, straddling Ashland and Iron Counties; also includes a small area on the eastern tip of Madeline Island. Ceded territory includes northern Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota.
Overview
The Bad River LaPointe Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians, or Bad River Tribe, are a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people. The Bad River Reservation is located on the south shore of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin and has a land area of about 193.11 square miles. The tribe had 6,945 members as of 2010, with a reservation population of 1,545 in 2020.
Historical Notes
Reservation land was set aside by the Treaty of La Pointe signed on September 30, 1854. According to Anishinaabe prophecy, the Lake Superior Chippewa found wild rice near Chequamegon Bay on the south shore of Lake Superior at the site of present-day Bad River Lapointe Reservation after migrating west from the Atlantic coast.
Language and Culture
The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians speak a language belonging to the Algonquian language family, with historical presence recorded across Wisconsin, documented from 1854 to present. Language family affiliation is one of the primary means by which historians and anthropologists identify historical connections between Indigenous peoples across time and geography.
Federal Recognition
The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians hold federal recognition from the United States government, administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States and are eligible for services and protections under federal Indian law. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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