Declaration of Intent to Honor Treaties

We are residents of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. This area is known as Anishinaabeg Akiing to the original people.

Regardless of our ancestry, we recognize that the land upon which we now live is to be governed in accordance with the various treaties negotiated between European settlers and the sovereign nations they found here.

If we live in these lands, we are treaty people. It is our duty, be we descendants of those who have so long lived in these lands, European settlers, or both, to honor fully the sacred promises that our ancestors made and upon which the original peoples here relied.

We are embarrassed and ashamed by the language and conduct from some non-tribal elected officials in our states that evoke the sense of supposedly divine entitlement to have invaded this land and do whatever they wish in the interest of profit, without appropriate regard to the welfare of the people, or the environment on which they rely, and to subsequently widely disregard the treaties that were negotiated between the nations.

This affirmation is but a small thing, a statement of principled intent, but we, the people of many colors and races, who live in these lands, find it necessary to take this crucial step at this time.

We, the undersigned, descendants of all races of people, affirm our unification in the insistence that all leaders elected to represent any level of non-Indigenous government in these lands at all times speak and otherwise conduct themselves in a manner that shows the utmost respect for the letter and the spirit of the treaties that are to govern relationships between sovereign nations.