Following up on last week's post (Interlochen Public Radio: Tribes urge U.S. to weigh in on Line 5 case as appeal sits in court), while the US government has yet to opine on the matter, filmmaker Mary Mazzio's latest documentary, Bad River: A Story of Defiance opened Friday, March 15. Featuring narrators Quannah Chasinghorse and Edward Norton, Mazzio's Bad River recounts of the indigenous Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, including their history of standing up to those who would deprive them of their rights.
According to Mazzio, the documentary came about through happenstance when she was introduced to Mike Wiggins in 2020. At the time, Wiggins was serving as the tribe’s chairman, and held that position through the duration of the project.
“So few people know who the Bad River people are, that the Bad River Band exists and how hard they’re fighting to protect Lake Superior,” Mazzio said.
“This is really a story about sovereignty,” Mazzio said. […] “This is not a film about the case, right? This is a film about the people. And this case, this struggle is only one chapter of many,” Mazzio said.
While the film documents the Enbridge case, it also spotlights the tribe’s fight against the Gogebic Taconite mine proposed in the headwaters of the Bad River, members’ involvement in the American Indian Movement, and the “Walleye Wars” of the 1980s and ‘90s, where sports fishermen and anti-treaty groups clashed with native fishermen in Wisconsin over their rights to hunt and gather in ceded territory.
