The recognition and implementation of American Indian treaty rights beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century are transforming the ways in which landscapes are managed, tribal and state institutions are structured, and civic identities are constructed in a number of states that surround Indian nations. This national treaty-rights movement first antedates, catalyzes, and finally comes to be coextensive with the passage of federal legislation that operationalizes tribal self-determination. This synergy has had the effect of politically transforming indigenous polities, their relationships with each other, and their relationships with other sovereign bodies. This article discusses the meaning and magnitude of the exercise of the rights by describing the institutional developments in the tribal communities that have facilitated and resulted from that exercise. It aspires to document the dimensions of the distinct and measurable renaissance that has taken place in the Ojibwe communities of the Western Great Lakes. This ramifying rebirth has been facilitated in large part by the Ojibwe tribes authorizing and developing the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), an intertribal natural resource agency. It is the twenty-fifth anniversary of GLIFWC that occasions this retrospective. (Contains 1 figure and 84 notes.)