Lake Superior Chippewa

rdf:langString Lake Superior Chippewa

rdf:langString The Lake Superior Chippewa (Anishinaabe: Gichigamiwininiwag) are a large number of Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) bands living around Lake Superior; this territory is considered part of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the United States. They migrated into the area by the seventeenth century, encroaching on the Eastern Dakota people who historically occupied the area. The Ojibwe defeated the Eastern Dakota and had their last battle in 1745, after which the Dakota Sioux migrated west into the Great Plains. While sharing a common culture and Anishinaabe language, this group of Ojibwe is highly decentralized, with at least twelve independent bands in this region. In the nineteenth century, the leaders of the bands negotiated together as the Lake Superior Chippewa with the United States government under a variety of treaties to protect their historic territories against land theft by European-American settlers. The United States set up several reservations for bands in this area under the treaties culminating in one in 1854. This enabled the people to stay in this territory rather than to be forced west of the Mississippi River, as the government had attempted. Under the treaty, the bands with reservations have been federally recognized as independent tribes; several retain Lake Superior Chippewa in their formal names to indicate their shared culture.