The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

In the fourth grade my class learned about thousands of years of Michigan history from the glaciers that carved out the Great Lakes to the Anishinaabe natives navigating the unprecedented introduction to international trade, disease, and war.

I enjoyed the course though it did not teach the lessons my mother taught me about the Anishinaabe, my maternal grandfather’s ancestors.

“Natives can’t handle liquor,” she’d say.

My mom told me that as French traders descended upon the New World, they gave our ancestors “fire water” to compromise negotiations and turn our ancestors against each other.

“We killed each other,” my mother said.

My mother taught me that since that first fateful introduction, alcoh

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