Women Are the Backbone of the Tribe

Meet Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle

By Ellen Miller | May 16, 2026

Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle’s journey has always been deeply informed by her community, who supported her and helped raise her, buying from her lemonade stand to help her go to college. She wanted to give back, but wasn’t sure how.

“When I was getting ready to graduate from college, I was grappling with this idea that I wanted to better serve my community and tribes across Indian Country here in the United States,” she says. Someone suggested that Gravelle go to law school and serve her community with that knowledge. Gravelle took the leap, studying indigenous law at Michigan State University’s Indigenous Law & Policy Center.

“That helped shape my worldview in terms of how to utilize my background to help tribal communities,” she says. When Gravelle moved home after working in D.C., she didn’t have a job lined up. It was her grandmother who encouraged her to run in the chief judge election, saying, “why did you go get all that education if you’re not going to do anything with it?”

Gravelle was elected in 2017, and in 2018 Bay Mills President Bryan Newland asked her to serve as in-house counsel, working as an attorney for the tribe. A couple of years later, on New Year’s Eve, Newland told Gravelle he would be resigning. A special election was held to elect the tribe’s next president.

“After some encouragement from multiple folks and long, serious conversations with my family, I entered the election, and here I am!” says Gravelle. She had just turned 28 years old when she was elected in 2021.

“The big thing I carry with me in everything I do is our identity as Ojibwe people, as Anishinaabe, as citizens of Bay Mills,” she explains. “I carry my culture and our culture at the center of who I am and the center of those decisions from the tribe. It’s given me clarity, by making sure I am grounded in those values. I’m proud and honored to be an indigenous person. Carrying our culture as the root and foundation of all those decisions is the top priority for me. It’s how you shape your worldview, how you treat others, how you are willing to look beyond to the concerns of tomorrow and the concerns of the next seven generations.”

Line 5 & the Environment

That centering has been a big part of every decision, big and small, Gravelle makes as president, but has been particularly visible in her environmental advocacy.

“Environmental work is very centered in our culture as well,” she adds. “We often have similar creation stories to other religions and cultures. In our creation stories, everything else comes before man and woman… not because man and woman were the most important but because they were the least important. We rely on all that came before us to be able to survive; if we didn’t have it we wouldn’t be able to exist as who we are, indigenous or non-indigenous, on the planet. When you center that worldview, that everything that came before you needs to be treated with respect and care because you need it to survive, it shapes how you treat the land, the water.”

Along those lines, Bay Mills Indian Community has been a big part of the fight against Line 5, an oil pipeline that crosses the bottom of the straits connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

“When that line ruptures, it will destroy not just resources but our culture and our way of life. How can we continue if the waters are polluted?” Gravelle asks.

The Great Lakes are especially important to the Bay Mills Indian Community, which was part of the group of indigenous tribes that “ceded 13 million acres of land and 14 million acres of water for the creation of the state of Michigan,” Gravelle explains. “Our ancestors had the foresight that protects the usual privileges of occupancy for our people. It’s holistic: it’s about more than just being able to fish, gather, and hunt, but it’s about how you occupy the land.”

She goes on to explain that “When you look at treaty resources—like the treaty right to fish—a lot of people think of it as a physical act: you need clean water to have spawning grounds, access to the lakes, to ensure the environment can sustainably support those fish populations. But the act of fishing is more than just consuming fish; it’s about bringing fish home and learning to cook with mom and grandma, learning about ceremony, learning songs at the table.”

Gravelle is quick to elaborate on the tribe’s commitment to the environment and sustainability; “Line 5 is just a small piece of the work,” she explains, pointing to their advocacy and involvement for environmental cleanup and brownfield cleanup, and their sustainability procedures in construction, which were crafted with net zero in mind, including filtering runoff water, engaging in energy efficient building practices, implementing a renewable energy infrastructure plan to build a solar farm, and more.

Looking Ahead

Gravelle isn’t sure what the future holds, though she knows it will continue to involve serving her community. For now, she’s committed to building a solid foundation as president, a future she did dream about as a kid, but one she saw happening much later in her life.

“I used to do five-year plans, 10-year plans, 15-year plans… [being president now] kind of threw that all for a loop! Part of those plans was being 50 when I did this,” she says.

For now, though, she recognizes the importance that her position has in inspiring the next generation of future leaders.

“I realized later how much of an impact my election had on everyone around me. I had younger kids coming up to me, who in their generation had not seen a female in this position before, telling me, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to do that too,’” she says.

“In 100+ years, we’ve only had one time in history with an entirely female council. It was monumental, and has still left its impact on Bay Mills Indian Community,” Gravelle reflects. “Women play a crucial role in the tribe as a whole. If you’re looking at the administration professionals who are handling grants or doing service implementation, it is almost always women. Women have always been the backbone of every tribe in providing for their people.”

Photo by Chelsey Cameron