Whitefish, a pale, silvery, and greenish-brown freshwater fish, are native to the Great Lakes Basin and are a staple of the community, food, and culture of indigenous tribes around the Great Lakes. The Anishinaabe people have valued the whitefish since creation.
“Whitefish are one of the species that are part of our creation story,” explains Doug Craven, director of natural resources for Little Traverse Bay Bands in Odawa. “The animals felt sorry for the Anishinaabe people who were struggling to find food, so the animals and fish came together. There was a circle. Everyone walked around and was asked who would help the Anishinaabe, what they could do to help the Anishinaabe to help through this time of need. Whitefish was one of the species that raised his hand and said he would feel sorry for the Anishinaabe and provide himself as a food source.”
[Editor’s Note: This article is co-publihsed with Great Lakes Now – Powered by Detroit PBS.]
In the Upper Peninsula, the “UP” of Michigan, there is a Native American owned and operated restaurant overlooking the Soo Locks and specializing in whitefish.
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Goetz’s Lockview restaurant in Sault Ste. Marie has been selling whitefish as a main menu item since they opened in 1945. On the restaurant’s website they tell the story of how the whitefish was sourced when they first opened: “The former owner and his dishwasher then walked to the locks for breakfast catch the fish and serve it for lunch that day.”
Now, Lockview doesn’t get its fish from the locks, but instead relies on local commercial fishermen from the community for their whitefish. The restaurant’s primary source of whitefish is a resident of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, the same tribe as the restaurant’s owners, the Goetz family.
Being able to serve whitefish is truly a community effort, one that is tragically threatened by declining whitefish populations in the Great Lakes. Some experts fear the species’ total collapse within just a few years.
The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa (LTBB) Department of Natural Resources is taking steps to ensure the future of whitefish in the Great Lakes basin is bright.
“One of the problems that whitefish face is the so-called Mismatch Theory, the availability of food versus the timing of hatching. When the climate was more stable, it was quite predictable when the hatching would occur and when the plankton bloom would occur. The fish eat plankton,” explained Gary Michaud, program manager of LTBB’s Great Lakes Fisheries Program.
To study whitefish and fish in general, there are several steps that must be taken to fully understand the problem. In the spring, as the fish begin to hatch, the tribe will head to four current index sites in Northern Michigan to catch, study and release. This continues in the spring and autumn.
“When fall comes around, we use hydroacoustic work, basically sonar, and we look for the fish and the bass,” Michaud said. “So instead of putting nets all over Little Traverse Bay, we just go out into the bay at night and see the size of the fish in the area and estimate how many there are there.”
Whitefish. (Photo?GLN)
In addition to collecting population data, the tribe also collects whitefish eggs from the bay where they will eventually live in the hatchery. The whitefish are raised in the hatchery until they reach approximately 60 millimeters in size, giving them the best chance of survival after being released into the bay. These efforts are all to ensure that the whitefish populations become stable and abundant to continue to support the fishermen, community, and culture.
“Commercial fishermen, subsistence fishermen, they’re part of Odawa’s identity. It’s important that we have a species. Whitefish, lake trout, are primarily the species that we’ve caught the most,” Doug Craven, director of the LTBB Division of Natural Resources, said in an interview. “If whitefish were to disappear from the Great Lakes, it would put our commercial fishermen and our community at risk.”
William Ortiz, LTBB citizen and council member, began small-boat commercial fishing in 2015. Before serving on the tribal council, fishing was the primary source of income for his family. Ortiz was the first gillnet fisherman on Big Bay De Noc since 1985 after obtaining a special permit in 2017.
“After I received that special permit, I was allowed to use 900 meters of large-mesh gillnet. I had a small boat at the time, so my wife and I set the nets, and the next morning I came back to the nets at six in the morning. I started lifting the nets and it was just whitefish after whitefish. It was packed,” Ortiz explained. ‘I’m busy hoisting nets, but I’m running out of places to put them. One of the other fishermen came by, so I called him up, and he dropped off a few boxes to me. I filled them all up, and I still had 300 yards of net to hoist back in, so I finally called the fishing company to pick me up at the dock, which they’ve never done before because I had more nets to empty . That day I caught over 3,000 pounds of fish.”
In the years since that astonishing whitefish catch, Ortiz explains that the amount of fish available in the bay has continued to decline each year. In 2020, Ortiz used the fish he caught to give to his tribal community during the pandemic. Fishing has given Ortiz the opportunity to connect more with his community and he has used it as a way to give back.
“I’ve had the opportunity to go out into the community and teach people how to build nets,” Ortiz said. “We started doing workshops on how to go out and fish for a living, and how to take care of your fish and things like that. Learning how to do it myself has given me the opportunity to teach other people, people from my tribe.”
Ortiz emphasized that fishing is often an intergenerational affair, with one boat containing multiple generations of a family. It is fishermen like Ortiz who put whitefish on the menu of restaurants like Lockview.
Mitch Goetz, Sault Tribe Citizen, explains that whitefish is by far their most popular item and sells far better than anything else on the menu. Goetz is the son of the owners and the current manager of the restaurant.
“Our town is small, but we do have regular customers, especially in the beginning, when we open, there’s nothing going on,” Goetz said. “We rely on those people. There are people who can’t wait, all winter they’re asking when we’re going to open. There are people who come in every Friday or any day and expect whitefish.”
Read more news on Great Lakes Now:
Great Lakes Moment: The Detroit River’s Important Role in the Whitefish Population
Whitefish are on the brink of collapse in Michigan. Can they learn to love rivers to survive?
About the Author: “Neely Bardwell (a descendant of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indian) is a staff reporter for Native News Online. Bardwell is also a student at Michigan State University, where she is majoring in Policy and minoring in Native American Studies.”
Contact: neely@nativenewsonline.net
