BY JORDAN TRAVIS
January 26, 2025
NORTHPORT — Land once the site of a campground near Northport is back in the hands of its original stewards. Mashkiigaki — formerly known as Timber Shores — is part of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians' ancestral homelands, tribal council Chairwoman Sandra Witherspoon said. Buying the property with the help of a grant and local nonprofit means the tribe can restore the 187 acres of mostly undeveloped land fronting Grand Traverse Bay, saving its critically sensitive habitat for flora and fauna within what she termed a land, water and nature preserve.
"We view the return of the land to tribal ownership as a unique and rare opportunity, so I mean, it's just wonderful," Witherspoon said.
The tribe purchased the land, for which the Anishinaabemowin name means, "place of the medicines," in part with a $6.53 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to the tribe.
Local nonprofit New Community Vision partnered with the tribal government to buy the property, totaling 214 acres, by raising $3.5 million in private donations, money from philanthropic organizations and more, as previously reported. The nonprofit will donate 25 acres near the corner of M-22 and East Camp Haven Road to Peninsula Housing to build below-market-rate homes there.
The tribe will use $928,000 included with the NOAA grant for restoration efforts, Witherspoon said. Within the year, a multi-generational group of tribal elders, youth, natural resources department managers and others will start a community engagement process to plan the land's future.
That'll no doubt include some replanting of native species, and restoration work to undo some of the campground alterations, Witherspoon said — the grant application calls for removing a small marina, taking out culverts to allow fish passage and restoring former wastewater treatment lagoons.
Brett Fessell, the tribe's restoration section leader, said those plans are still in the works.
"We want to leave that to the community — the tribal community and the local non-tribal community, and have visioning sessions toexplore and discuss what kind of features we should pay the most attention to, and then for what species and those elements," he said.
Coastal wetlands like those at Mashkiigaki (say, mashKEEG-aki) are becoming more rare, Fessell said. They give refuge to migrating birds, land animals and insects, and serve as nurseries for breeding fish. Such wetlands also act as natural shoreline buffers as lake levels rise and fall.
Further inland, dune and swale complexes — where ribbons of swampland run parallel to sandy ridges — not only capture rain water but serve as habitat to lots of different species of plants, animals and insects, Fessell said. Dune and swale complexes is home to threatened and endangered species, and future assessments will give an idea of what species are found on the land.
The name points to something endangered as well, Fessell said — the history of the land passed down by the Anishinaabek who recognized it as excellent hunting, foraging and medicine-gathering grounds. Such traditional knowledge came close to disappearing altogether, and the space offers a chance to reconnect with the land and memories of it.
More recently, the land was the center of controversy over a proposal to reboot the former Timber Shores campground submitted in 2020.
While neighbors and others raised fears of its impact to wetlands and the bay's water quality, the developer pushed back on those as exaggerated or false. Leelanau Township voters in 2022 upheld recent changes to zoning ordinances that would have imposed deeper setbacks from wetlands on the property, prompting New Community Vision's founders to look for ways to save the land.
Mashkiigaki will join the 2,981 acres under Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians ownership, according to figures from the tribe. That's down from 87,000 acres set aside in Leelanau County in 1855, which the U.S. illegally terminated in 1872. The tribe regained federal recognition as a sovereign Indigenous nation in 1980.
To Witherspoon, regaining ownership of Mashkiigaki is an example of the "Land Back" movement in action.
"This has just been a wonderful gift," she said. "Those were lands that were traditionally and historically our homeland, that were supposed to be ours through our treaties that were taken and used for other purposes, so that's what the whole 'Land Back' movement is about."
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