Zaagajiiwe - Jim Schlender

by Jim Baily

Reserve, Wisconsin (Akiing)

A vigilant defender of the environment and of the reserved rights Native people retain to hunt, fish and gather natural resources, James H. Schlender, walked on to the spirit world on Aug. 30. His passing at age 58 due to complications from surgery at an Eau Claire, Wisconsin, hospital came as a shock to his colleagues at the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission, which he helped to create, and saddened members of the Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) Band of Anishinaabe, of which he was an enrolled member.

A member of the Lynx clan, his Anishinaabe name was Sauguhjiwe (man cresting the hill). He was a member of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, Schlender served as a Lac Courte Oreilles tribal attorney from 1978 through the mid 1980s, and was on the LCO Tribal Governing Board for three consecutive terms.

In 1983 he became chairman of the newly established Voigt Intertribal Task Force, which was created to secure the reserved rights of Ojibwe to hunt, fish and gather natural resources within the ceded territories of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.

With the establishment of the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), Schlender played a vital part in dispelling the tensions between the tribes and those who opposed the exercise of traditional spear fishing. He became the executive administrator of GLIFWC in 1986, and held that position until his passing.

“Clearly, he was a courageous individual. He truly was a voice of reason and calmness,” said George Meyer, who was then the head of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. At first, Meyer and Schlender butted heads over the spear fishing issue, but the law was on Schlender’s side, and he eventually prevailed.

GLIFWC’s news release upon his death noted that “While Schlender’s legal and negotiating proficiency were hallmarks of his early career, he became increasingly active in infusing Ojibwe traditions into the daily work of the Commission over the last decade.”

In 1998 he helped to organize the Waabanong Run from the upper Great Lakes to Washington, D.C. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Ojibwe memorial at Sandy Lake, which commemorated the 1852 massacre that, in turn, lead to Chief Buffalo’s journey to the nation’s capital to negotiate the 1854 treaty that established permanent Ojibwe reservations.

James H. Schlender was born  on March 5, 1947, at the Hayward Indian Hospital. He is survived by his wife, Agnes “Punkin” Fleming and five children.