Great Lakes fish consumption app improves Anishinaabe way of life, study shows

By Daniel Schoenherr, Capital News Service

LANSING — A long history of Great Lakes pollution has discouraged the Anishinaabe practice of fish consumption, as eating what’s caught in Great Lakes waters means ingesting toxic chemicals.

But a mobile app — GigiigooApp — is safely bringing the tradition back.

A new study from the Medical University of Wisconsin shows hundreds of Chippewa-Ottawa Resource Authority tribe members in the Northern Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula are using information from the app to decide how much of what types of fish to eat.

It’s allowing Anishinaabe Native Americans to continue “living in a good way,” said study author Matthew Dellinger, an associate professor of epidemiology at the university.

The software’s high satisfaction rate is proof that similar apps for other wild foods such as wild rice could be developed in the future, Dellinger said.

GigiigooApp’s interface has undergone improvements since its 2021 launch. Credit: Daniel Schoenherr

The app, named after an Ojibwe term meaning “our fish” and launched in 2021, is like a calculator for wild fish consumption: Users input factors like their age, weight and pregnancy status, and a list of suggested meal limits for different types of fish is generated.

Its recommendations draw on Department of Health and Human Services data on mercury and PCBs, which are carcinogenic industrial chemicals.

The app recommends fewer monthly meals of the types of fish that tend to accumulate the most contaminants, like salmon and lake trout. It also adjusts the recommended maximum number of meals based on which lake the fish was caught in.

The negative health effects of eating local fish have discouraged tribe members from exercising their right to live off their land, Dellinger said.

Activities like fishing, farming and hunting are important parts of their identities, he said.

“Being able to meaningfully engage in those activities, more than just occasionally, is a way of life that’s been enshrined in federal (court) decisions,” he said. “It’s a way to plant a cultural and political flag.”

The app is intended to improve users’ understanding of what advisories exist and why, Dellinger said. This helps inform their decisions about fish consumption.

The study evaluated feedback to the app from members of the Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Based on other recent studies, GigiigooApp has been improved in overall design and with simpler explanations for its recommendations, Dellinger said.

The new study reported that the app’s latest version is useful to the vast majority of users: 95% said they would eat more fish if they could use it (up from 53.5% around launch in 2021) and 94.1% said they would use it regularly (up from 54.8%).

The study appeared in the Journal of Great Lakes Research.

Members of a focus group in March said the app was helpful to understand the hazards of wild fish consumption, said Beth Seiloff, a co-author and the health education program manager for the Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan based in Sault Ste. Marie.

Dellinger said the success of GigiigooApp has opened the door to larger projects with tribes in the U.S. and Canada.

“We’re putting our heads together to see how much we can leverage mobile technology and AI algorithms to scale up what can be done with this app,” he said.

Seiloff said that while the app’s foreseeable development will focus on its Indigenous audience,  it can benefit other people who fish  in those waters.

“It’s not only Native Americans that are harvesting fish from these waterways,” she said. “We want this interactive software to be used by everybody.”