About Chief Hole in the Day

“Although it may cost me my liberty, I will continue to speak and act .. till the wrongs of my people shall be righted”
    - Hole in the Day, Ojibwe Patriot. 1828-1868.
 
    Living from l828 until his assassination in l868, Hole in the Day, or Bug o ne giizhig the Younger was an Ojibwe leader who used his political skills to negotiate and speak on behalf of his people, insuring a land base, and challenging that the Ojibwe not be treated as second class citizens in our homeland of Anishinaabe Akiing. A member of the Bear Clan, he lived in a time when Ojibwe lands were under intense pressure by mining interests and lumber barons, complicated by bribery, theft, starvation and relocation in our communities. Using his political skills, Hole in the Day traveled to Washington four times to negotiate treaties and rights for the Ojibwe people. He had six wives, including a white woman, with whom he returned from Washington. At all times he resisted being treated as a second-class citizen, at one point challenging Treaty Commissioner Dole: “Are you the smartest man our Great Father could send in a trying time like this?...You have been talking to me as if I was  a child. I may not be as smart as you are, but your talk to me sounds like baby talk…You said the treaty reads so and so, but that is a lie and you know it is…”
    Hole in the Day was one of the negotiators of the l867 treaty which created the White Earth Reservation, and most of his descendants came to live on this reservation. He was never allowed to live out his life in peace on White Earth, but was assassinated on the Gull River, near Crow Wing, in l868.  

“I am willing to sacrifice myself for my band and die for them…”