Stewart Huntington
ICT
A bill to return state forest land to tribal stewardship has hit a speed bump in the Minnesota Legislature but sponsors and Native leaders remain upbeat on the prospects for the effort.
“This is healing not only for us,” said White Earth Reservation Business Committee Chairman Michael Fairbanks, “but healing for Minnesota too.”
The bill would transfer approximately 155,000 acres of what is now the White Earth State Forest to the White Earth Nation. It was tabled last week in a Senate committee in part due to resistance from local residents who feared loss of access and local governments who feared loss of revenue.
“I have been contacted by well over 300 people that are against this,” said Steve Green, a White Earth Citizen and Republican state senator who spoke against the bill.
All of the land proposed for transfer lies within the original boundaries of the White Earth Reservation established by treaty in 1867. Like most tribes in the country, White Earth lost vast tracts of its reservation to private and public schemes hatched under federal allotment policies that began in the 1880s. The White Earth State Forest was established in the early 20th Century but title to the land has proven elusive, according to state Sen. Mary Kunesh who sponsored the land-transfer legislation.
“I have not been able to find any agreement back in the day when this became a state forest between the … state and the tribe,” Kunesh, a Standing Rock citizen, told ICT. Kunesh decried the characterization of her bill as being a “land grab.”
“No, it’s not a land grab,” she said. “If anything we’re taking back from a land grab. It seems to me that the White Earth Nation should have the right as a sovereign Nation to manage their own lands.”
The bill’s language would transfer the forest land to the tribe and also establish a five-year time period to work through issues with all stakeholders involving forest access, timber practices and revenue for local government entities.
The tribe has maintained that access to land would not be curtailed and in a statement affirmed its commitment “natural resource stewardship and supporting current and future outdoor activity for all Minnesotans within the White Earth State Forest. … The White Earth Nation intends for public access in the forest to continue and be carefully balanced with conservation, restoration, and stewardship goals – a model common in state and federal parks and forests. Preservation of the land for future generations is a priority for the Nation, demonstrated by the Nation’s history of being strong stewards of the land.”
Added Fairbanks: “I’m trying to keep everyone that can get up there to enjoy that beauty and preserve that not only for my grandkids, but everyone’s grandkids.”
Kunesh told ICT she was not sure exactly what would happen with the bill this Legislative session and that it may, like many proposed laws, be reintroduced in coming years.
She called the effort important. “We have to remember that there is a lot of timber within the White Earth Nation reservation in that forest … that has been cut and sold for, you know, tens and twenties and thirties of years, (and) those dollars did not come back to the tribe,” she said. “There are permits for hunting and fishing and recreation in that forest that have not come back to the tribe. … And I think that’s a huge problem.
“I would like to see Minnesota look at those issues where we have taken tribal lands and the proceeds from them. And I would hope that other states across the nation do as well.”
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