Qualla: Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa: Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Ojibwe tell of a migration that began on the Atlantic coast and followed a sacred vision westward -- guided by Gichi Manidoo, the Great Spirit, to find the food that grows on water. That food was wild rice, and the journey ended at Madeline Island in Lake Superior, the final stopping place. Of all the Ojibwe bands in Wisconsin, the Red Cliff Band lives closest to that spiritual center, their reservation occupying the Lake Superior shoreline just north of Bayfield on the Bayfield Peninsula. As of 2010, the band counted 5,312 enrolled members, roughly half living on the reservation and the rest in nearby Bayfield or the Belanger Settlement. Their proximity to Madeline Island is not incidental. It is the defining fact of their identity.

Image: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa: Following Wild Rice to the End of the Journey

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Red Cliff Band descends from the Lake Superior Chippewa, the branch of the Ojibwe nation that migrated west along the south shore of Lake Superior from Sault Ste. Marie. Their oral tradition describes stopping places along the route, each guided by spiritual direction, until ...

Image: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa: Chief Buffalo's Choice

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1850, the federal government attempted to remove the Lake Superior bands from Wisconsin, a forced relocation that ended in the Sandy Lake Tragedy -- a catastrophe in which hundreds of Ojibwe died of disease and starvation while waiting for annuity payments that never came. The...

Image: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa: Fish, Timber, and the Fight for Treaty Rights

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Life on the early reservation was constrained. Most tribal members worked for white employers in Bayfield, many in the commercial fishing industry that sustained Lake Superior communities. At the turn of the 20th century, the Commission of Indian Affairs permitted lumbering compa...

Image: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa: The First Tribal National Park

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Congress, Public domain. In 2012, the Red Cliff Band did something no tribe had done before: they established Frog Bay Tribal National Park, the first tribal national park in the United States open to the public. The park protects boreal forest, wetland, and undeveloped Lake Superior coastline on the res...

Image: United States Congress | Public domain