Ojibwe traders traveled from the Mille Lacs reservation to the Crow Wing trading post, bringing handiwork, beads, basketry, and furs in exchange for clothing and food. Over nearly 500 years, the Ojibwe, or Anishinabe, were among the Native Americans who settled in the Brainerd Lakes Area long before the arrival of Europeans. Leaving East Coast encampments in search of the place where food grows on water, they traveled to Lake Superior's Madeline Island, a sacred place that became a center point for the Ojibwe nation. The region's waterways provided mobility and wild rice, a staple of the Ojibwe diet, and Ojibwe dwellings varied according to available materials, including bark and saplings. Moving westward, Ojibwe explorers found abundant fish, game, wild rice, and maple sugar along the shores of another vast body of water, and those who settled there became known as the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Waterways remained a chief source of travel and trade, and the arrival of European settlers and the creation of a trading post at the confluence of the Crow Wing and Mississippi rivers brought a new source of commerce. The Mille Lacs Ojibwe have raised their children in the region since settling there in the mid-1700s. Tensions between European settlers and Native Americans gradually intensified, resulting in violence and death. The Mille Lacs Band honored treaties with the United States government, promising not to harm or interfere with settlers, and refused to join other tribes in warfare against them. Federal policies and the loss of land and tribal sovereignty then brought decades of poverty and despair. In the 1980s, the Mille Lacs Band sought self-governance and the right to own and operate casino gaming enterprises on reservation lands. In 1991, the band opened Grand Casino Mille Lacs, and its revenues revitalized life on the reservation, ending years of struggle and deprivation. The Band built three ceremonial buildings where members practice spiritual and cultural traditions, Nay Ah Shing School teaches Ojibwe language and culture along with subjects such as math, science, and English, and the Band's three branches of government conduct tribal business in a government center where several hundred employees work.