By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Truckin’
At an Oval Beach press conference Aug. 21 I was introduced to Lakota Hobia, who in 2019 became Gun Lake Tribal Historic Preservation Officer.
I took her picture with others that day, but the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance-called event had too much else going on to let us talk more. Like tell her my experience with the Match-E-Be-Nash-E-Wish Gun Lake Band of Potawatomi goes way back.
From 1993 till 2006 I wrote, took pictures for, edited and laid out the weekly Penasee Globe newspaper based in Wayland. It was locally owned, freewheeling, allowed creativity yet taught professionalism too.
I came to love the surrounding communities: Gun Lake, Bradley, Shelbyville, Dorr, Hopkins, Hilliards, Martin … For 13 years I harvested images, tales and, most of all, friendships there.
“Penasee” — English spellings vary — derives from the “Be-Nash-E,” or “Bird” portion of the tribe’s name. That, I was told, drew from late 18th-century Chief Noonday, head of the Grand River Band of Ottawa that included a Potawatomi settlement in Bradley, where their casino flourishes now like a Phoenix rising. Our publishers lived on a quiet pond out that way.
Another connections from last week’s press conference: The late Patty Birkholz, a Saugatuck-based Republican “conservative” in the sense of striving to conserve nature’s nature’s beauty.
I met Patty in a different context close to 30 years ago. As state Rep for all Allegan County, she opposed to the tribe building a casino there. Having gone to annual corn soup suppers in members’ old Bradley mission church, roamed its graveyard seeking the marker for radio’s old-time voice of Tonto and covered tribal historical efforts needed to win federal recognition, thus sovereign nation status and rights to enrich themselves via commercial gambling, I didn’t start out on great terms with Patty.
She was aligned then with GOP business moguls and neighbor Native American casinos, such as Mt. Pleasant’s Soaring Eagle and Michigan City’s Blue Chip, who didn’t want competition for entertainment complexes they were building.
Small local congregation, opposed to gambling and crime of all sorts sure to come with it, joined that strange-bedfellows coalition. When Gun Lake Tribe spokesmen unfurled their plan during a packed public hearing in Wayland High School’s gymnasium, one crowd crowd member shouted at the Native Americans, “Go back to where you came from!”
How could an impoverished tribe contest such powerful interests aligned against them? Las Vegas investment capital to the rescue.
Patty was no more a casino fan than I was, but the federal Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act made it clear to me my tribal friends had a right to build one.
Drive by the U.S. 131 Bradley exit today, you can see who won. But foes dragged out the permitting process for years, buying competition-free time … So it was win-win, right?
My Penasee Globe owner friends, wanting to retire while young enough to travel, sold in 2003 to a newspaper chain that promoted me to editor, but I felt creatively too reined in. I got myself fired in 2006 having already interviewed for my dream job in Saugatuck.
So I crossed paths with Patty again in that role. Regardless our differences, we shared reverence — as do Native Americans, witness last week’s press conference — for this land.
Lakota was among those present as state Reps. Joey Andrews (D-St. Joseph) and Rachel Hood (D-Grand Rapids) announced bills they claim will protect Michigan Critical Dune areas from commercial sand mining.
The Alliance, citing Patty’s legacy, was in favor. There are other places for casinos, commerce that sprouts around them and gated private communities whose residents cherish these views too.
I remembered two days before Christmas 2009 when Patty and other conservationists posed for pictures digging in sy the newly-acquired Saugatuck Harbor Natural Area.It stretches from where we now stood 173 acres north to the river channel. The Grateful Dead song “Truckin’,” “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been,” played inside my mind.
