Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan

The contentious claims of groups seeking to use Lake Michigan’s fisheries resources were at the center of modern America’s emerging environmental politics in the middle of the twentieth century. Inheriting the environmental abuse, political oversights, and cultural inclinations of an earlier era, Lake Michigan’s later twentieth century fisheries stakeholders found themselves relentlessly divided by a series of disputes arising from the promotion of sport fishing over commercial fishing, policy-making positions of state government, the ecological changes wrought by nonindigenous species, and the reclamation of treaty-rights fishing by Native Americans.

Going beyond the chronicling of past events, Fish for All contextualizes the shared experiences that shape each group’s collective memory and presents their historical narratives as discourse that legitimizes their current claims to the resource. Fish for All highlights the historically charged consciousness of fishing communities and points to the evolving communication that will take place between them, fisheries historians, fisheries anthropologists, scientists, and policymakers.