MPR’s Leif Enger reports on White Earth Reservation tribe purchase of about 3,500 acres in attempt to reclaim land. Segment includes numerous interviews and views from tribal members and local Menominee county residents.

This is part 1 of 3 of land purchase series.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) The reservation is an enormous and scarcely populated stretch of Earth 36 miles by 36 miles of farmland and raw Timber. The Census Bureau says fewer than 3000 Native Americans live here, though. Bureau officials have admitted that count is probably lower than the actual number all the same just a small fraction of the reservation is actually under native ownership white Earth tribal chairman chip Wadena says that's changing someday. I'd like to see us on at least a majority of the land. Within the reservation that's a possibility to what Dina and other tribal leaders land means prosperity and influence. It means the reservation where unemployment and poverty are still very much in evidence. Despite a successful new casino can hold to a dream of self-sufficiency since 1992. The tribe has purchased about 3,500 Acres. It intends to speed up from there. It Robert Harmons car lot and junkyard just north of the reservation on u.s. Highway to Harmons tame white geese cruise for grasshoppers among Buicks and rusts cab pickups Harmon used to have more room for his geese and other Critters. He had 440 acres and Mahnomen County in the heart of the reservation when he decided to sell that land going to the tribe was an easy choice. We had some offers but the tribe offered cash They here's the land they made an offer and I agreed and they we brought the abstracts up to date and they gave me a check. That was that quick. This so far is how the tribe is doing it a hundred acres here 40 acres there occasionally a bigger piece like Harmons 440 a drop at a time a few more Acres placed in trust and removed from County tax rolls. And that say County officials is the Insidious part. You ignore the dripping long enough and one day wake up to discover. Your tax base has eroded. ODed away Richard Larson is a longtime member of the Mahnomen County
(00:01:58) Board. Anytime a parcel of land is sold to like the tribe that would be except the paying taxes. Somebody has to pick up those dollars and that would be the other landowners. So certainly they are concerned very
(00:02:11) definitely Mahnomen is the only County completely enclosed within the reservation and therefore the one most at risk to lose its base of taxable land. It's a small County and a poor one perpetually at or near the bottom of Lowest per capita income scale and property taxes here are already high the owner of a $55,000 house in the city of Mahnomen pays about $900 a year County attorney. Gerald Paulson says, well, no one's complaining about the business brought in by the Shooting Star Casino & Hotel The increased traffic has meant a greater need for expensive
(00:02:45) services. Our reservation does not at the present time have its own Police Department, you know in our County Sheriff's Department. In the city of police department provide law enforcement Services, when you have more people you have more activity
(00:03:07) the shooting star opened in Mahnomen in October of 91 considered a risk for its remoteness. It's nevertheless done. Well providing over a thousand jobs 650 of them to Native Americans. The casino has benefited Mahnomen in obvious ways. The city's Main Street has never been busier. And this year the tribe will pay more than half a million dollars in property taxes, but it's also the band's most effective tool in the land buyback effort tribal chairman chip Wadena says local governments may not like that, but they'd better get used to it. It's because of a long-term or what I should say of paternalism that they've that they've lived with all our lives, you know, in other words that we were people that weren't gameplay. Layers, you know, I mean or contributing to the community are you know, stuff like that and they liked it there because you know, they had the control of it. Now the fear is that you know, we may take this thing over and start showing work but things are allowed and it's all right for us to do that to you, but it ain't all right for you to do that to us. It's important to understand that the tribal buyback isn't the only financial pressure facing the County's the federal government leases thousands of Acres of wetlands here at prices far below property tax rates, and the Department of Natural Resources in the name of protecting Wetlands has vetoed the sale of thousands more Acres of tax forfeited land the rise of Native American power is the newest challenge for local governments here. And in other places where Native gaming has been successful 7th District Congressman Collin Peterson,
(00:04:42) you can't stop them from purchasing land, you know, it's a free country but somehow or another we have to figure out how do we help Mahnomen County? one of the issues that could come up that might get Moving one of these years is whether we should tax casinos if we're going to move in that direction clearly some of that money should be diverted for counties like Mahnomen County, but I think worth two three four years of away from anybody seriously looking at that issue too and that'll be a huge War.
(00:05:14) The band's expansion of its land base doesn't stop with the official tribal government. The white Earth land recovery project is a separate group within the tribe, which has so far purchased about a thousand acres recently project supporters blockaded. Logging road that runs through some of those anchors white Earth members Robert simek and Tonisha boyish were constructing a ceremonial roundhouse on the spot digging post holes for a circle of log uprights to frame the walls.
(00:05:40) Yeah, we're using Aspen, you know, same type of trees that is being clear cut about half a mile through the woods here.
(00:05:48) The land recovery project is the brainchild of Winona Laduke a white Earth and Rowley and Harvard Law School graduate who's built an effective fundraising Organization for the Piece of buying reservation land the project has also lobbied Congress unsuccessfully to relinquish control of the nearby Tamarack Wildlife Refuge Tonisha by has moved to the reservation six years ago after growing up in several st. Cloud foster homes. He says for him learning to be Native American has been as much in the land as in the blood.
(00:06:17) Yeah use the land. I used to medicines. I don't go see doctors. Yeah use the land the trees the animals. And the more clear-cutting goes on the more these things are taken away from us
(00:06:32) in its own land campaign. The recovery project doesn't enjoy the same advantages as the tribal government its purchases at least so far are not exempt from taxes and it doesn't have the backing of Casino revenues along the shores of Round Lake in Northern Becker County where the project recently bought a house and fifty eight acres to use as its headquarters the mostly white owners of Summer cabins and retirement homes have expressed mixed reactions. A lot of people
(00:06:58) are you know, uh racist about
(00:07:02) it? Okay, Greg, none has had property on Round Lake for 50 years. There
(00:07:06) was some very vocal talk about I'm selling quick. I'm selling getting out of here while I can still get out and everything will go to rack and ruin and there will be all sorts of traffic, you know, a lot of people we don't want around and it will be horrible.
(00:07:24) Rickman says though that most of that talk has died down. Down Drive the gravel road circling this Bay of Round Lake and you see a lot of cabins very few for sale signs. There is she says a sense of resignation among the people here a sense that the pendulum is sweeping toward if not cooperation at least some mutual acceptance between white and native land owners lay finger Main Street radio.