Caucus Resolution: American Indian Nations Should Have Access to Outdoor Heritage Fund
With Minnesota’s political caucuses coming up March 1, consider proposing this resolution:
Resolved: the Minnesota Legislature shall ensure that American Indian nations in Minnesota have equal access to the Outdoor Heritage Fund without diminishing their treaty rights.
Here is the background, provided by a recent Star Tribune editorial: The Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council has voted twice to approve $2.2 million to buy about 2,000 acres from Potlach for preservation. White Earth would buy the land and transfer it to a federal trust. The project was included in a 2015 omnibus bill, but funding got stripped out at the end of the session for dubious reasons, raising “regrettable questions about bias toward American Indian communities.”
Read more details in our earlier blog. The Resolution’s goal is to give tribal communities a fair shot at getting money set aside as part of the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.
Dream of Wild Health: Indigenous Food Share Sigh Up
Dream of Wild Health, a 10-acre organic farm in Hugo, is now taking orders for its 2016 Community Supported Agriculture program. In addition to getting a weekly food share during the summer, you are supporting the Native youth who work on the farm.
A half share (pick up every other week) is $275. A full share is $500. The pick-up location is the Midtown Farmers Market near East Lake and Hiawatha in Minneapolis. They are working on a St. Paul site, too.
The farm has a mission “to restore health and well-being in the Native community by recovering knowledge of and access to healthy Indigenous foods, medicines and lifeways.”
Honor the Earth’s Enbridge Year in Review
Honor The Earth has released its Enbridge 2015 Year in Review. According to Honor the Earth’s website, the report was personally delivered by Executive Director Winona LaDuke to Enbridge CEO Al Monaco. “The report highlights some of the most exciting, frustrating, and at times dangerous adventures that Enbridge had in 2015, along with acknowledging risks to investors in the Canadian pipeline company.” It continues:
With Enbridge stock prices having dropped 60% over the past twelve months, 2016 is likely to be full of challenges for the Canadian pipeline company. The once-booming Bakken region of North Dakota is in full-on bust, with rig counts down to 54, and a multitude of drilling companies declaring bankruptcy. …
The landmark January 12, 2016 ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, in favor of the First Nations opposing Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, will further complicate the company’s Canadian interests.
Click on the links above for more details.
Treaty Tensions in Northern Minnesota Over Hunting, Fishing Rights
In an effort to force a court test case of off reservation hunting and fishing rights, four Ojibwe protesters got charged earlier this year for “illegally” harvesting wild rice and netting fishing. Minnesota Public Radio did several pieces to explain the current case, and put the treaty rights battle in historical context:
- Explaining Minnesota’s 1837, 1854 and 1855 Ojibwe treaties
- ‘Stand up for our rights’: Indian treaty tensions run deep in Minnesota.
- Original intent? History, language blur Minnesota Indian treaty disputes
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