4.05.010 Statement of Policy

The Bad River Tribal Council recognizes that the land within its jurisdiction represents a unique confluence of cultural, historical, and environmental resources. Home to the ancestors of the Bad River Band for over three centuries, the land is an irreplaceable habitat for the wealth of fish, waterfowl, and mammal life from which the Chippewa Indians have traditionally derived their sustenance. Where the rivers widen, wild rice stands stretch out to the high ground and down to the Lake, and contribute to a delicate ecosystem about with life. Upstream, the Bad River Falls are the site of pictographs created by the ancestors of those Indians who still fish the Falls today. Throughout the territory traditional burial grounds are scattered, spiritual wellsprings of the Bad River Band and visible reminders of the Band's ancient attachment to the area now known as the Bad River Reservation.

Reminders of man's more recent and continuing impact on the land are also visible. Wrought by tribal members and non-members alike, sometimes beneficial to the Bad River Band and sometimes not, sometimes in harmony with the land and sometimes not, these artifacts are lasting mementos of man's presence. Timber sites, roads, utility rights-of-way, government buildings, stores, houses, taverns, motels, hunting shacks, quarries, dumps, mills - all have left a mark of more or less permanence whether appropriately placed and productively used or not.

The Bad River Tribal Council, aware of its responsibility to guard for future generations the enjoyment of the resources that so many past generations of Chippewa Indians have enjoyed, is equally aware of increasing pressures on those resources. The demand for wooded and shoreline land is rapidly growing, as greater numbers of the general population seek sites for homes, vacation sites, and commercial development. Meanwhile the Bad River Band seeks an improved economic base to establish the financial security of itself and its members.

In limited areas the Band currently has the capability of controlling development. Tribal members have requested leases of tribal land in delicate areas to establish home sites for their families. The Council has denied these leases and by doing so has preserved these lands, to the immediate detriment of some tribal members.

The Council cannot, however, control the development of the reservation solely in its capacity as lessor. Regrettably, through the unwise actions of the United States government in previous years, much of the Reservation lands are no longer in tribal hands. Either as restricted allotments or as fee-title land, this property is beyond the proprietary control of the Band. Only through the exercise of the Band's regulatory authority can the majority of Reservation lands be subject to controlled, planned development, to the mutual reciprocal benefit of all.

The development of a land use plan, encompassing the 125,000 acres that constitute the Bad River Reservation, cannot spring full-blown overnight. On the other hand, developmental pressures will not cease while the Council deliberates. In order therefore to forestall any action which may limit the Band's regulatory prerogatives, in order to notify those with an interest in any Reservation lands that a comprehensive land use plan is under consideration, in order to establish a process for the creation of such a plan, and in order to establish interim controls pending the approval of such a plan, this ordinance is adopted.