By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 12, 2006; A02

MOLE LAKE, Wis. -- Tina and Rick Van Zile are members of the Mole Lake Ojibwe tribe here in northern Wisconsin. Each spring for more than 15 years, they have gone spearfishing together, engaging in a tradition for their tribe and gathering food that is vital to their diet.

But in recent years they have added something new to the old ways -- they consult a color-coded map that tells them which of the more than 50 lakes in the region have the highest mercury levels.

"I wouldn't even dream of going to these red ones," said Tina Van Zile, pointing to one of the lakes designated as having the highest mercury content.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 22 states including Wisconsin have statewide mercury advisories, and 23 more have advisories for specific bodies of water. Typical advisories warn children and women of childbearing age against eating more than one game fish per month. The mercury in the fish can cause neurological damage in children and fetuses as well as health problems in adults.

Because fishing is so central to the traditions, social life and economic sustenance of many Indian tribes, the warnings have special significance for them.

"Fishing is a big part of what we eat and how we eat; it ties back to the culture and traditions of who we are as a people," said Mole Lake tribal leader Wayne LaBine.

He describes mercury as an organ of "Mother Earth's body" that has been turned into a toxin through exploitation of natural resources such as coal. Mercury is emitted from coal-burning power plants, paper mills and older chlorine plants.

"Fossil fuels were not intended to be burned like this, so the balance of the Earth is thrown off and mercury is misplaced," LaBine said.

Along with taking part in the traditional spring spearfishing season and the sucker season that follows it, many Ojibwe from Mole Lake and surrounding tribes angle throughout the summer, ice-fish in the winter and make a yearly trip to fish with nets in Minnesota.

Fish dishes are served at ceremonies, funerals, fundraisers and other occasions. Most families have a freezer stocked year-round with fish, in bags labeled with the fish's size and lake of origin so they know its mercury risk.

Tribe member Steve Tuckwab said that when Mole Lake elders go to ceremonial meetings with other tribes where fish is served, "I tell them maybe they shouldn't eat that fish because they don't know what lake it's from and how safe it is."

Like berry picking, maple tapping and wild-rice gathering, spearfishing is one of the ways that tribal members preserve and honor their roots. It also has contemporary political significance.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, spearfishing Ojibwe were besieged by non-Indian protesters who would shout racist slurs and throw stones and beer bottles at them. The protesters were angry that a series of court decisions had affirmed the tribal members' treaty rights to fish and hunt out of season on off-reservation land that the tribes had ceded to the government in the mid-1800s.

Under agreements between tribal and governmental authorities, Ojibwe can spearfish during a two-week period each year when walleye are spawning. They go out at night in small motorboats, sighting the fishes' glowing eyes in the beams of flashlights and skewering their catch with a swift stab of a five-pronged spear.

"After the right was given to us by the courts, we have to exercise it or it could be lost again," said Rick Van Zile, who often hears complaints about Indian fishing rights from the non-Indians he works with on construction jobs. "It's a tradition."

Mercury is a problem for Indian tribes nationwide. In Northern California, the Gold Rush left a legacy of mercury in lakes because liquid mercury was used to separate gold from silt and ore.

Scientists at the University of California at Davis estimated there are 100 tons of mercury in the sediments of Clear Lake, a fishing ground for Pomo Indians. Most came from the nearby Sulphur Bank Mercury Mine, which operated through the mid-20th century. The International Indian Treaty Council, a group that works on issues of indigenous rights, says that between 3 million and 8 million pounds of mercury was absorbed into the environment in California during the Gold Rush years.

Besides its cultural significance, fishing is also an important source of cheap protein for many low-income Indians living on reservations.

"You're dealing with an underprivileged and impoverished population; we don't have the choice of going to the store and buying the leanest-cut meat," said Bob Shimek, a Minnesota coordinator of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who said he suffered months of strokelike symptoms caused by mercury after weeks of eating northern pike three times a day.

Mercury is more concentrated in older, larger fish and in fish higher on the food chain. So aggressive public-awareness campaigns by the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission in the Midwest and the International Indian Treaty Council in California urge people to eat smaller fish and to vary the type, mixing walleye, muskies and pike, which are higher on the food chain, with smaller varieties.

"The educational part is challenging," said Shimek, who is making it a personal mission to get the word out about mercury. "I run into people who say, 'These fish were good enough for my grandmother and grandfather, so they're good enough for me.' "