Wisconsin Reservation Offers A Climate Success Story And A Warning
Climate change is causing more severe flooding around the country, and a disproportionate number of Native American communities are on the front lines.
When Star Ames was a child there was a flood. The streets were like rivers and the houses like islands. It was 1960 and the village of Odanah, Wis. was up to its neck.
The town had been built on the banks of the Bad River, in the floodplain. "I remember watching the river come up," Ames says. "Every place we thought was high enough, the water kept coming up."
Odanah was home to thousands of members of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe, and, as the water rose, people were trapped. "My dad went house to house in a boat and evacuated people," Star remembers, "taking people out through their second story windows."
Ames' father, Donald, was the tribal chairman at the time. "What I remember the most about
