Chippewa Band Skirts Ugly Treaty-Rights Fight : Indians: In one part of Wisconsin, cool heads guard friendly relations between the town and the reservation.

It all began with a simple gesture of goodwill five or six years ago. An Indian was invited to a Christmas party.

Later, the Lac Court Oreilles Chippewa and the Hayward Lakes Resort Assn. began meeting regularly.

Now, signs of cooperation abound. To prove the point to a visitor, tribal chairman Gaiashkibos motions toward the colorful storefront of a tribe-operated gas station.

Near the door there is a list naming 24 businesses, most of them owned by non-Indians in neighboring communities off the reservation.

It is a far cry from what goes on all around Wisconsin between non-Indians and the other five Chippewa bands over Indian rights to hunt, spearfish, gather food and cut timber off tribal grounds. The courts have affirmed those rights, granted in 19th-Century treaties.

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, non-Indians have challenged those rights and there have been violent clashes.

“As a whole, I think there is a greater tolerance and understanding,” said Gaiashkibos, a 39-year-old Marine Corps veteran who holds a master’s degree in counseling. “Every time there is a problem, we don’t say, ‘There’s racism.’ We don’t do that.”

Other tribal peoples--most notably the Lac du Flambeau--have been targets of protests and racial slurs during spring spearfishing, but the Lac Court Oreilles have fostered peaceful relations with their neighbors.

“The tribe complements the white community and the white community complements the tribe. Sane people are in charge here on both sides,” said Ken Toebe, president of Hayward Lakes Resort Assn., an influential group of 140 owners of resort property.

Restraint, mutual understanding and respect between whites and the Chippewa have blossomed since that Christmas party.

Gaiashkibos, who has been involved in tribal government for six of the last seven years, said that tribal members “feel important” because of their participation in the non-Indian community.

In one of the first meetings, then-Tribal Chairman Rick St. Germaine rose to speak.

He said: “You keep your radicals in line; we will keep our radicals in line.”

Political leaders seeking to end confrontations between Indians and non-Indians near the Lac du Flambeau Reservation, about 100 miles east of Hayward, have studied the relations here.

Don Gauger, chairman of the Minocqua Town Board, said that he recently spent time in the Hayward area studying that kindred spirit. His community has been at the heart of the treaty-rights dispute with the Lac du Flambeau and is the home of the activist group Stop Treaty Abuse Wisconsin.

Mayberry said that people in the Hayward area also disagree on the issue of treaty rights, but prefer to avoid the disruptive demonstrations and fights staged elsewhere.

Gaiashkibos agreed. He said that not all is perfect between the tribe and the white community. The tribe was upset when Sawyer County put money into a coalition of counties that opposes Indian rights to cut timber.

“Because of one item we don’t throw out the whole thing,” he said.

That “whole thing” also includes:

* A Hayward church sponsoring an Indian Awareness Sunday.

* Business people from the reservation and Hayward working together in a nonprofit corporation to attract new industry to the area.

* The resort association writing letters of support for various projects at the tribe’s request.

* The tribe has offering to stock off-reservation lakes when its new fish hatchery is completed.

* The resort association donating $200 to help send a delegation of Wisconsin Indians to Germany last September.

* Teachers from public and reservation schools training together at each other’s schools. Some Indian teachers have moved from reservation schools into public schools.

Paul DeMaine, who owns a newspaper on the reservation, said the two sides get along because “the silent majority has been able to speak up here.”

When racist feelings began to surface, the “non-Indian community spoke up against it,” DeMaine said.

It wasn’t always so peaceful, Toebe recalled.

Equal Rights for Everyone, a group that opposes treaty rights, was active in the area for a while, but its influence waned after one of its leaders ran for state Senate in 1986 and received less than 20% of the vote. Treaty rights were a big issue in that campaign, Toebe said.

Gaiashkibos said that clashes over treaty rights still could flare up in the Hayward area, however. He played down his importance in local diplomacy, but a poster hung outside his office provides some insight into his philosophy.

It reads: “We shall learn these devices the white man has. . . . We shall master his machinery, his inventions, his skills, his medicine, his planning. But we will retain our beauty and still be Indian.”