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SPEAKER 1: Yes, Johnson! Yes!

JOHN BIEWEN: Carloads of sign carrying men organized by a group that calls itself the Minnesota Hunting and Angling Club crowded onto the Capitol steps. Many of them wore camouflage jackets and hunting caps. They said they came to deliver a message to Governor Arne Carlson and Attorney General Skip Humphrey about American Indian fishing and hunting rights on land around Mille Lacs Lake. Former Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant stepped to the microphone to read the sportsmen's demands when Leonard Thompson from the White Earth Reservation stepped forward to challenge him.

BUD GRANT: Now, where I'm coming from is I'm just basically interested in what our government is doing to protect our resources.

LEONARD THOMPSON: What about the American Indian resources? What about the treaties that have been broken? Make a treaty, break a treaty, is that it? We have this right! We have this right! Yes, we do!

[SHOUTING]

BUD GRANT: Wait, hold it. Wait a minute now. Let him have his say.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Yeah, right!

BUD GRANT: Let him have his say. We're not here to--

LEONARD THOMPSON: How many treaties been broken? Can you tell me that?

BUD GRANT: This man is under the influence.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Can you tell me-- no! Oh, I'm under the influence now, huh? Tell me! I'm under--

BUD GRANT: Where's our security?

LEONARD THOMPSON: --the influence, huh?

SPEAKER 2: Get him to detox.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Yeah, you tell me. Take me to detox. Here's another drunk Indian.

BUD GRANT: Where's our security?

LEONARD THOMPSON: Stereotype, right? What am I doing wrong, Bud Grant?

SPEAKER 2: Thompson furiously denied that he'd been drinking, and there was no smell of alcohol on his breath. Grant eventually gave up the microphone to Thompson for a couple of minutes before other club members removed Thompson.

LEONARD THOMPSON: How many treaties have been made? How much was stolen from us?

JOHN BIEWEN: At issue are broad fishing, hunting, and gathering rights that Ojibwe Indians say they secured in an 1837 treaty with the US government. The tribe maintains it got those rights in exchange for land it gave up. It's these same treaty rights that have prompted angry, racially-loaded confrontations between Indians and sport fishers in Wisconsin and other states.

In a court case scheduled for next year, the Mille Lacs Band is seeking federal affirmation of its hunting and fishing rights. The state has been negotiating with the band and considering allowing some gillnetting on the lake in order to forestall the court case. The sportsmen came to Saint Paul to oppose secret negotiations and to call for a tough state challenge to the band's claim. Bud Grant.

BUD GRANT: We want our governor and attorney general to come out and let us know where they stand on these issues, what they're doing about it, what they intend to do about it, and how they're going to handle it. That's what we presented to the governor and the attorney general.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER 2: Leaders of the Hunting and Angling Club say the resort and sport fishing industries on Mille Lacs lake are threatened by spear fishing and gillnet fishing, two methods that Ojibwe tribe members can use, according to treaty, but non-tribal members can't. Ojibwe leaders say what little gillnet fishing they've done over the years is minuscule compared to the impact of sport fishing. The Mille Lacs Band has agreed not to spear or use gillnets this spring.

CLYDE BELLECOURT: Indian people are not depleting the resource. They're not going to deplete the resource. We have never done that in our history here, which goes back thousands and thousands of years before Christopher Columbus landed here.

JOHN BIEWEN: Clyde Bellecourt, director of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement, says the stepped up activity by opponents of Indian fishing rights has little to do with the protection of natural resources. The Minnesota hunters and fishers were joined by members of two Wisconsin groups that tried unsuccessfully to get Indian fishing rights overturned in that state. Bellecourt.

CLYDE BELLECOURT: Protect American rights and resource, stop treaty abuse and these other racist groups that have been practicing this type of racism against Indians, not just here, but in Wisconsin and 17 other Western states, where they're trying to trample upon and get treaty rights abrogated again. I've now moved into the state of Minnesota, in the process of establishing their rights here and stirring up this same type of protest that they had in Wisconsin, which, by the way, has cost the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. That doesn't have to happen here.

JOHN BIEWEN: Leaders of the hunting and fishing groups deny that their opposition to Indian treaty rights is based on racism. Department of Natural Resources commissioner Rod Sando told the group that the state will do what's necessary to protect the sport, fishing, and hunting industries in Minnesota. This is John Biewen.