Nature Conservancy representative Pat Ladner presented Grand Portage tribal chairman Norman Deschampe with a picture of Susie Island to commemorate the Conservancy’s giving Susie Island back to the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The Conservancy has been working for more than a year with Grand Portage on this transfer of land.
Friday, September 15 will go down as a great day for the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
What was lost to the band, Susie Island, was given back in a heartfelt celebration held at the Grand Portage Reservation Tribal Council (RTC) building at 3 p.m.
Peggy Ladner, state director in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, was there for the Nature Conservancy, along with John Anderson, trustee for the Conservancy, and about three dozen interested parties and observers gathered to take part in the exchange.
A picture of Susie Island was presented to Tribal Chairman Norman Deschampe, who passed it around for everyone to look at. The inscription below the picture read, “The Nature Conservancy affirms its friendship and partnership with the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in restoring Susie Island to the Band.”
For his part, Deschampe said the band’s goal and the Nature Conservancy’s goals were the same, to protect and preserve the unique island.
“The band really appreciates the role the Nature Conservancy played in restoring Susie Island to band ownership,” said Deschampe. “The Conservancy recognized that it could help our people accomplish a long-term goal and, at the same time, ensure that the islands will be protected. It was the right thing to do for many reasons.”
Deschampe also thanked the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, which recently agreed to the Grand Portage Band’s request that Susie Island be placed into trust status on its behalf. The result is that Susie Island will continue to be preserved and managed in its natural state by the band, “at least as long as I am alive and have something to say about it,” Deschampe said.
The Nature Conservancy and the Grand Portage Band agreed Susie Island should be maintained in its natural state and in January 2016 the Grand Portage Reservation Tribal Council voted to initiate the process to return the island to the Grand Portage Band.
“With the help of our supporters including the renowned wildlife artist Francis Lee Jaques, the Nature Conservancy protected Susie Island from the threat of development,” Ladner said. “It is only fitting that it belongs once again to the Grand Portage Band. Susie Island is in good hands.”
When the speakers were done people gathered for cake and coffee. Mary Bowles, who works at the RTC building, made the cake and it featured a raised Susie Island surrounded by blue frosting that looked like the lake. It tasted as great as it looked.
Susie Island/ Francis Lee Jaques Memorial Preserve
Susie Island is 142 acres and is the largest of 13 small, rocky islands located about one-half mile from the shore of Grand Portage. Grand Portage owns the other 12 islands, and has been talking and working with the Nature Conservancy for some time to gain ownership of the big island, said April McCormick, who works with Trust Lands for Grand Portage. McCormick introduced the speakers to about 30-40 people who attended.
Because of its location, Susie Island experiences more extreme weather than the mainland, and is wetter and cooler, which has resulted in “cloud forest.” This environment supports a rich variety of mosses and lichens that are found nowhere else, said Ladner, who was citing the work of Chel Anderson, a DNR biologist and author who wrote extensively about the island.
A unique feature, said Ladner, might be the sphagnum moss that hangs from trees and blankets the floor in one- to three-foot thickness over much of the island.
In the past, Ladner said the island had been logged, mined and used for commercial fishing, but under the agreement with Grand Portage, the island will be preserved in its natural state.
Acquiring the island took patience and perseverance. The south portion of Susie Island was sold to the Nature Conservancy in 1973, with several transactions taking place until the Conservancy owned it entirely in 1991.
Who was Francis Lee Jaques?
The preserve is named after Francis Lee Jaques, who was an artist and conservationist who lived from 1887 to 1969. “He was my uncle,” said Donna Johnson from Lindstrom, Minnesota, who was at the celebration with her husband, Daryl.
Francis and his wife and Florence Page Jaques collaborated on two famous books, Snowshoe Country and Canoe Country, and sales of those books allowed the Jacques’s to help fund a conservation project for Susie Island.
“My great-uncle was a great artist who traveled the world over,” said Johnson. I knew him as Uncle Lee. He was my father’s older brother. He was born in Geneseo, Illinois and moved in 1899 to Elmo, Kansas, until 1904 when he moved to Aitkin, Minnesota.
I really didn’t know him very well since he lived most of his life outside Minnesota. When he returned he moved to the James J. Hill farm at the end of Rice Street in North St. Paul. Home there had to be approved by a committee, but it sounded like his status let him build a smaller home with ponds on two sides.
“Because of their love of the wilderness it was a perfect place since he had a studio overlooking the ponds that had ducks and geese.
“Uncle Lee also was interested in model trains and had a train room that depicted the U.S. from coast to coast. He made cars and all the scenery. The remains of his collection are on display at the Minnesota Mining Museum in Chisholm.
He was a quiet man, but very generous and gave me an oil painting for my first marriage and a pair of signed pen and inks from one of his books for my second marriage.
“His dioramas at the Bell Museum are being relocated to the new museum on the corner of Larpentur and Cleveland Avenues in St Paul. We have visited his dioramas in Sinton, Texas and Lincoln, Nebraska and we are told some of his work is in storage at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.”
Susie Island
Because of its sensitive native plants, remote location, hazards to boaters and significance to the band, the Nature Conservancy required special permission to visit the island. Permission must now be obtained from the band.
“It’s preserved for the band and the people here,” Deschampe said. “Our people go out there fishing and gathering.”
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