This Just In ...

The 4,024-member Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, headquartered in the nearby village of Peshawbestown, has its own government, strong cultural traditions and close community relationships. It also operates several of the area's major business enterprises, including the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa -- the Midwest's largest full-service resort and conference center - as well as the Leelanau Sands Casino and the Turtle Creek Casino Resort.

Up to now, the Band and its members have been more active in directing and promoting the community's various visitor attractions than attracting attention to themselves. Aside from its annual Traditional Pow Wow, a three-day festival of music, dance and food held every August, the tribe hasn't provided many resources to encourage visitors to investigate in its language, customs and inspiring history.

That's about to change.

The band is opening the Eyaawing Museum & Cultural Center, a strikingly modern glass building on a bluff above West Grand Traverse Bay. The new center (whose name means "Who we are") will be a museum, visitor center and community archive for tribal members and those interested in learning more about the Anishinaabek.

"This tribe has a thousand years of history, and we're learning more about it all the time," says Tribal Chairman Derek J. Bailey. "We want people to better understand the Grand Traverse Band."

The museum contains exhibit galleries, archives, a study center, an audio/video viewing room and a museum store featuring such traditional and contemporary Anishinaabek arts as black ash baskets, bead and quill jewelry, jewelry made from Petoskey stones and other and native stones, dream catchers, prints, birchbark mirrors, as well as sacred herb soaps and lotions. The museum grounds are an "outdoor commons" where visitors can learn about traditional uses for local plants.

The Anishinaabek comprise the Ottawa and Chippewa and their cousins the Potawatomi, three closely allied tribal groups who have lived around the Upper Great Lakes for several centuries. (Oral tradition says they migrated to the region from areas to the north and east.) The Ottawa were particularly skilled as traders and businessmen, and controlled the lucrative North American fur trade for generations, trading with the French, British and finally the Americans.

The Grand Traverse Band traces its origins to several groups who moved into the Traverse City area in the aftermath of an 1836 treaty that ceded most of what would later become the state of Michigan to the United States. One group settled in Old Mission, an experimental farming and teaching community set up by Presbyterian minister Peter Dougherty in 1839; another came south from the Catholic mission at Cross Village and settled near Suttons Bay, while a third migrated north from the area around Holland to settle near the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula.

Under the terms of a second treaty signed in 1855, the Grand Traverse region was intended to be a permanent reserve where the Indians could hunt, fish and farm without interference, but that promise was almost immediately ignored as new settlers moved into the area. Most native homestead claims were overruled, and those Anishinaabek who could not earn a living as lumberjacks, hunters and fishing guides often left for better-paying jobs in the factories of Detroit and Grand Rapids.

But distance could not break the strong ties these exiles had to the land and the families they had left behind. For generations, they returned every year to celebrate holidays, honor their elders, and remind their children what it felt like to be an Indian among Indians.

Nor did the leaders of the tribe give up their struggle to recover the land and the political independence they had been promised; in 1978, after repeated legal defeats, they became the first U.S. tribe to successfully petition for recognition of its sovereignty. Two years later, the government of the Grand Traverse Band was officially recognized by the U.S. government, and the dispersed members of the tribe began to return.

HOW TO GET THERE: The Eyaawing Museum & Cultural Center is located at 2304 N. West Bay Shore Dr. in Peshawbestown, 20 miles north of Traverse City and 6 miles north of Suttons Bay.

WHEN TO COME: The museum is open all year round, but the best opportunity for visitors to interact with the people and customs of the Grand Traverse Band is undoubtedly at the Peshawbestown Traditional Pow Wow, an annual event that combines the best features of a dance, a religious observance and an enormous family reunion. The Pow Wow is held in a special outdoor amphitheatre near the museum.

"I'd invite anyone who wants to get to the heart of the Grand Traverse Band to come to one of our Pow Wows," says Chairman Bailey. "It's a celebration of life, a gathering of all the families, a way of honoring the elders and all the wisdom they represent, and a look forward to the young people who are our future."

For information about other events and attractions in the Traverse City area, visit the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau's Web site at VisitTraverseCity.com For free help with room reservations, contact the Bureau's toll-free number at 1-800-TRAVERSE.