When we sit down to a Thanksgiving meal with friends and family, it’s easy to overlook the cranberry sauce, that familiar side with a vague purpose. But give it a second thought this year: the dark red fruit, associated with health and well-being, is laden with chemicals that are killing the lake of a Wisconsin-based Native American tribe and violating the tribe’s treaty rights.



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Wisconsin is the largest producer of cranberries in the United States, helped in part by a special exemption from the state’s department of natural resources that allows the industry to bypass permitting for construction projects and diversion of surface water.



A number of cranberry operations sit adjacent to Lac Courte Oreilles, so named for the Native American tribe whose reservation encompasses the eastern half of the lake. Treaties signed with the federal government guarantee hunting, fishing and gathering rights for the tribe in exchange for land. But the fish population is at risk.

Though the cranberry industry has painted a picture of sun-soaked floating bogs of red berries and farmers in waist-high boots, the reality is a commercial operation that requires massive quantities of water to flood and drain fields of the marsh-grown vine several times throughout the year.



Water is pumped in from nearby lakes and streams, and once the harvest is complete, it is pumped back into the water supply. Heavy use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides on the plants result in clean water entering the bogs and phosphorus-laden water exiting.

Phosphorus levels contained in the operation’s runoff are so high that the fish population in the lake has declined, and some areas cannot be used during summer months due to increased algae and scum. Elevated lead, arsenic, cadmium and other toxic metals have also been found in cranberry discharges.

Repeated attempts to bring cranberry growers under the purview of the Clean Water Act have been to no avail – the Environmental Protection Agency views the runoff from harvesting as “irrigation return flow”, which is exempt from federal law.

Growing pressure from the Lac Courte Oreilles tribe and landowners located on the lake led to the designation of one bay as “impaired water”. However, legal wrangling has produced the illogical conclusion that one bay has no impact on the rest of the lake, thus avoiding the boundaries of the reservation.

The Lac Courte Oreilles tribe has not asked the state to end one of its biggest industries. The technology exists for growers to stop contaminating the water, simply by discharging the harvest runoff into a constructed holding pond instead of back into the lake. But Wisconsin’s department of natural resources continues to resist enacting regulations for cranberry growers, as it has for decades.

So amid the construction paper headdresses and buckled hats, after President Obama pardons a turkey but before dessert, spare a thought for the lowly cranberry. Despite dated, hokey representations perpetuated by inaccurate education, sports mascots and the media, Native Americans are still here. Our story didn’t end with Manifest Destiny, and Thanksgiving isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The land and resource struggles of the past have become modern issues that continue to plague tribal nations today.



Spring for the organic, pesticide-free cranberries this year, and have a talk about that pesky Pilgrim and Indian story that overlooks the realities of first contact and relations with indigenous peoples. We have a long way to go in shaping America’s narrative into one of truth, but it’s got to start somewhere.