The legal foundation for Indian gaming traces back to a Leech Lake mobile home property tax dispute

Indian gaming hit $39 billion in 2021, according to news reports. It all began in 1972, with a dispute over a $147 property tax bill on a mobile home on the Leech Lake Reservation.

News: ELCA Synod makes reparations payment, a ‘2023 Indigenous Rights, Climate Justice Platform’, and more

In this post:

• Northeastern Minnesota Synod of the ELCA makes $185,000 reparations payment to MN Chippewa Tribe
• America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains
• MNIPL, Indigenous leaders, launch 2023 Indigenous Rights, Climate Justice platform
• Report: Roots, solutions to Native American over incarceration
• Land Back in Alaska

News: Historic vote on blood quantum rule, Marlene Helgemo walks on, MPD Settlement Agreement expected by Fall

In this post:

• Minnesota Chippewa Tribe has historic vote to stop using colonial ‘blood quantum rules’ to define membership
• Marlene Helgemo walks on
• City of Minneapolis, MN Dept. of Human Rights, announce principles, timeframe on Settlement Agreement to address police department’s pattern of racial discrimination

News and Events: Boarding schools, treaty rights, the importance of Aunties, and more

In this post:

• Webinar Thursday: Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ Resilience: The Legacy and Impacts of Indian Boarding Schools
• Webinar July 20: Tribal Treaty Rights and Energy Infrastructure, July 20
• All My Relations Art presents Noojimo (She Heals) celebrating the importance of Aunties in Indigenous spaces, opens July 19
• Minnesota Chippewa Tribe to vote on blood quantum enrollment rules this summer
• New quarter will honor Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee Nation’s first female principal chief

Gov. Walz administration fails again at ‘meaningful consultation’ with tribal nations

Enbridge new Line 3’s dewatering plan raises hard questions

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has approved a permit allowing Enbridge to increase its Line 3 trench dewatering by nearly ten fold, up to 5 billion gallons.

The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe has written Gov. Tim Walz requesting he tell the DNR to rescind the permit, “until such time as the Department consults with the White Earth Reservation and all other impacted tribes” as promised in Walz’s 2019 executive order.

“Time of of the essence,” wrote Catherine J. Chavers, President of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

Line 3’s new dewatering permit raises many questions:

• Why didn’t it trigger Gov. Tim Walz’s executive order requiring meaningful consultation with Native Nations?
• Why is Enbridge requesting such a big increase in dewatering so late in construction?
• Why wasn’t there more public engagement in the process?
• What are the potential environmental harms from increased dewatering?

Anishinaabe ‘Rights of Manoomin’ Laws Create Legal Basis to Protect Sacred Wild Rice

‘This would be the first law to recognize the legal rights of a plant species‘

The White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the 1855 Treaty Authority are taking action to address the growing threats to native wild rice, such as potential crude oil pipeline spills or the spread of genetically modified wild rice. They are establishing new laws and claiming treaty rights to protect their culture and sacred food.

The 1855 Treaty Alliance was established to protect the treaty rights of Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, White Earth, East Lake and Sandy Lake bands. The Alliance covers those lands the Anishinaabe ceded as part of their 1855 Treaty with the United States. (Among those treaty rights, bands claim the right to hunt, fish and gather — including harvesting wild rice — on ceded lands.)

According to a media statement from the 1855 Treaty Alliance:

Recently the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the 1855 Treaty Alliance adopted Rights of Manoomn for on and off reservation protection of wild rice and the clean, fresh water resources and habitats in which it thrives. The Rights of Manoomin were adopted because “it has become necessary to provide a legal basis to protect wild rice and fresh water resources as part of our primary treaty foods for future generations” …

PUC to Vote Thursday, Dec. 7 on Line 3’s Environmental Impact Statement

Honor the Earth map of Enbridge Line 3.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is scheduled to vote on the Enbridge Line 3 environmental impact statement (EIS) Thursday, Dec. 7, starting at 9:30 a.m. at its regular meeting space in Metro Square, 121 7th Place East, Suite 350, St. Paul.

The public will not have an opportunity to speak, but public presence sends a message to the PUC that people are watching.

To recap: Enbridge’s existing Line 3 is old and failing; Enbridge wants to abandon it in the ground. (Bad idea.) It has proposed a new and larger pipeline along a new route through northern Minnesota. It threatens the Mississippi headwaters, lakes, rivers and wild rice areas. It violates the interests of Ojibwe people who have reserved treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather along lands crossed by the pipeline.

The EIS decision is one of several key  Line 3 votes. Should the PUC find the EIS “inadequate” it would not kill the project, but would likely delay it. The EIS would need further work. (A project delay would also cost Enbridge money.) Even if the PUC approves the EIS, the PUC still needs to vote on Line 3’s Certificate of Need and Route Plan. Those votes are not expected until April.

The EIS has been criticized by indigenous and environmental groups. The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, in cooperation with six Chippewa bands and Honor the Earth, has released its own draft environmental impact statement, called the Tribal Cumulative Impact Statement.

Here is the PUC’s Dec. 7 agenda:

1. Should the Commission find that the Final Environmental Impact Statement is Adequate?

2. Should the Commission adopt the administrative law judge’s Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Recommendation?

3. Whether the data identified as Trade Secret in Appendix F and Appendix I of Enbridge Energy, Limited Partnership’s Certificate of Need Application for the Proposed Line 3 Replacement Project is public under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.

Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Doing Its Own Environmental Impact Statement for Northern MN Pipeline

The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is stepping up its efforts to stop Enbridge Line 3, a proposed reroute and expansion of an oil pipeline running through northern Minnesota, from Kittson County in the northwest corner to Duluth/Superior.

We wrote last week about Enbridge’s Line 3 plans (read here). The project has raised concerns about leaks that could contaminate fresh water and wild rice areas. The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe plans to develop its own environmental impact statement (EIS) as a “supplement and counterpoint” to the EIS being developed by the State of Minnesota.

Honor the Earth is calling it “The People’s EIS,” and is raising money to help move it forward.