Chai Vang and Relationships in the Wisconsin Northwoods

A Native American editor shares local insights into other interactions, tensions in the WI community where the high-profile Vang shooting case recently closed

By Paul DeMain, News From Indian Country Editor

Sept. 28, 2005 - The trial of Chai Vang brought an unprecedented deluge of media and attention to our quiet little northwoods city of Hayward, Wisconsin, recently. Despite the record number of stories written about the event that led up to the shooting death of six Wisconsin hunters, what seemed to be missing was another perspective only miles from the center of attention: the Chippewa reservation eleven miles southeast of Hayward.

Not that anybody from this reservation didn't find the death of six hunters appalling, or in need of condolences for the six victims and their families, including the Vang family who have lost one of their own in the incident.

Vang, who was convicted of six charges of murder in the first degree and attempted murder, will spend the rest of his life in prison, depriving their family of the major bread winner and father, grandfather, brother and son. If justice is done, there will never be a feeling of justice in its complete form for either party, but that is the way our judicial system works, and the jury has spoken.

What wasn't said in all the media frenzy, and in part not just because of the fear of retribution to the Indian community, is how many tribal hunters and family members felt about this incident - which in the opinion of many, was an event waiting to happen.

I can tell you that from the day the event occurred, many of my friends and neighbors on the reservation always felt there was more to the story than was being heard.

Denials to the media by local law enforcement officials, the Attorney General and non-Natives in the region that racism played any part in the incident flies in the face of the the facts of the case.

The Native community remembers the thousand of protesters that lined up at the lakes of southern Sawyer County to denounce not only reserved treaty rights to hunting and fishing in the ceded territory, but to rain upon the Native fishers who recall epithets, death threats, gunshots and vandalism to vehicles.

The mere fact that Sawyer County school officials had a contingency plan to protect the children at a nearby elementary school in Hayward in case violence broke out, following an acquittal, speaks volumes to what even some non-Native authorities thought white hunters and spectators at the trial were capable of doing if their opinion of justice was not rendered.

Just about every group in northern Wisconsin has some kind of village idiot in its crowd that under the right circumstances can be both embarrassing and cause an incident.

The fact that Vang had apologized and was leaving the area when five members of the hunting party decided they needed to teach Vang a lesson and roared up on ATVs to confront him with foul language, derogatory racial remarks while preventing him to leave for a period of time, according to court testimony, helped fuel the end result. (By the way, this part of the incident was one part that nobody read about in any major incident reports released by the police or printed by the media last fall.)

Whether death was justified or not, and to what extent, at this point only the Creator knows the real truth. Conflicting testimony about a pot shot being taken in the direction of Vang and how he reacted to it, is still a question in my mind.

From conflicting reports from one of the surviving victims (Hessebeck) who last fall claimed that another hunter (Willers) took a shot at Vang after Vang had shot at him, then retracted it, to the missing shell casing that nobody could find from their gun, like somebody had cleaned up the scene, to court testimony from another hunter who heard one shot, then a number of rapid shots (Vang had a semi-automatic), there were questions in my mind that were never answered to my satisfaction.

Needless to say, the jury did not believe Vang's version of the story that he was shot at first, over that of the non-Native hunters. And even then, it was hard for me to understand how the incident ended up with six dead people, other than the glaring fact that maybe this group, after confronting other hunters in the area in the same way in past years, finally messed with the wrong man.

Despite taking the stand and doing fairly well in explaining some of the events of the day, Vang, a trained military sniper - whose training focuses on taking out all the danger of the enemy, and who came from Laos some twenty or more years ago to become a vibrant citizen of this country - I could still see the cultural differences and language barriers in the questions and answers.

In asking who deserved to die that day, Vang responded to the Attorney General by naming three of the six victims. Had the Attorney General asked who was responsible for the events that occurred that day, the answer might have been less dramatic in the media and less appalling to the jury, but never the less exactly the same.

Hopefully the end of the trial will bring some closure to these events. But with that, not much has changed in the north country where tribal hunters in recent years have been confronted and left the woods out of an inner uneasiness of what could happen. Vandalized cars with smashed windows and flattening of tires have occurred as well. Of course, local officials and many of the non-Native community where these events have happened know for sure that it has nothing to do with racism, or ethnic intolerance.

They seem to ignore what is directly in front of them at times.

I learned long ago that honkys and niggers came in all colors of the rainbow, including copper-toned brown. Racism is something that our own Native community must battle on a regular basis as much as anybody else.

Most of the communities of northern Wisconsin claim they are not racist, but they are untested. The don't live next to a Black, Hispanic or Hmong community - they think they are tolerant but bar talk and casual chatter tell me they have not come the full circle.

I have had my sons in hockey for several years now, and one of my son's coaches is a well respected member of the Sawyer County law enforcement community. I still have the greatest respect for him, and I have no doubt if some fan or parent called my son out in some racist fashion, he would be the first to get back in their face. But sitting around a table one day he neither blushed or hesitated to describe the latest trend of our young (Indian and non-Indian) listening to what he called "nigger" music.

Those are the little things that tell me what might be under the hidden layer that people can not see in themselves, the ceasefire and uneasy peace that the Indian community here didn't want to offend by saying what was on their minds about the events of November 21, 2004, nor other incidents we still put up with.

If you ask around, there are very few people who really understand the Chippewa community that lies only a few miles from this town. Our community, and I mean our community both off and on the reservation, knows even less about the Hmong, and their courageous fight as allies of the U.S. government in Southeast Asia against the communists.

Most of our Native hunters will be out this season, but in the back of their minds there is the unsettling question of how they might have reacted had it been them that had been confronted. At what point is it right to defend yourself in the face of humiliating factors, or if you're surrounded, or in face of fear, or in responding to an alleged pot shot by one of our northern Wisconsin idiots.

What if? And what if the all white jury doesn't believe you?

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For a radio story about the Chai Vang murder/racism case quoting DeMain and other voices you can visit http://www.superiorbroadcast.org/Chai_Vang.htm

Paul DeMain is editor of News From Indian Country, one of the largest circulating Native publications in North America, published from the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin. He is also a past President of the Native American Journalists Association, UNITY Journalists of Color, and former Wisconsin Governor's policy advisor during the term of Governor Anthony S.Earl.  News From Indian Country can be reviewed at www.IndianCountryNews.com or www.NewsFromIndianCountry.com, and is also available as an electronic e-edition by clicking on the website's Newsstand banner ad.