Was there another way to handle Chippewa in Michigan?

A bit of a hijack (and not defending CiM), but:

I had never used a message board before this place. I’d been online since 1994. Been reading SD since 1998. At the bottom of a column it said “comment on this column.” But when I clicked the link and got this page, and none of the topics were about the thread I was reading, I was mighty confused.

Fast forward to 2005, and my fiance shows me SDMB…

Somewhere an Indian stands over a discarded user account and sheds a tear…