— There is a lot of interest among White Earth tribal members over the band’s efforts to regain control over the White Earth State Forest and the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, Tribal Chairman Michael Fairbanks said in his State of the Nation address on Thursday.
“We are working on this,” he said.
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Regarding the 43,000-acre Tamarac Refuge, at the March 29 Tribal Council meeting, White Earth “signed our end of the MOA (memorandum of agreement) with U.S. Fish & Wildlife,” Fairbanks said. “We’re integrating our conservation code into the Fish & Wildlife code.” The next steps involving the MOA will be announced later on the White Earth Nation website or Facebook page, he said.
After that, he said, “next up — hopefully — we’re going to get it 638'ed from the Fish & Wildlife Service. So I’ll give you updates on that — those are things that are going on today.”
Public Law 93-638 gives tribes the authority to contract with the federal government to operate programs serving their tribal members and others.
White Earth leadership has also been advocating to have the state turn over control of the White Earth State Forest to the band.
“The White Earth State Forest — let’s get it home,” Fairbanks said. “You know, we’ve been working on this for a few years now. One thing I know is that it touches a lot of us — especially me, all of this council, everyone in this room is about bringing that forest back home.”
He said the state forest was created in 1933, and in 1934 the government signed the IRA — the Indian Reorganization Act.
“Think about those two dates there,” Fairbanks said. “Before 1934, what was happening — those atrocities, the Dawes Act and the Nelson Act. The timber barons were taking all of our land. The government was kicking us — our ancestors — off their allotments and moving them. So you think about that history of the 155,000 acres of land out there (in the White Earth State Forest).”
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The Dawes Act of 1887, also known as the General Allotment Act, allowed for the breaking up of reservation land, which had been held in common by the members of a tribe, into small allotments to be parceled out to individuals.
The Nelson Act of 1889 was a federal law that relocated all the Anishinaabe people in Minnesota to the White Earth Indian Reservation, and expropriated the vacated reservations for sale to European settlers.
All in all, it was a disaster for White Earth, Fairbanks said.
“After 90-plus years, it (the White Earth State Forest) has to come home to us, so we can start to heal ourselves from those atrocities that happened to us,” he said. “How we were swindled, deceived and forcefully kicked off our lands. So it’s time to get our land back, guys – it’s time!”
Of course it can be frustrating, he added. “But I have to be diplomatic about it. Cordial. Respectful. As your elected leader, I have to do everything in my power — we have to do everything in our power — to get this land back. I feel we have a lot of support out there, the membership clearly wants news on a daily note, but it moves slow.”
The state forest land transfer bill was tabled in the Minnesota Senate due to Sen. Grant Hauschild, a DFLer from Hermantown, Fairbanks said. “I had a conversation with him yesterday. He’s looking more at it now, because I want to get it off that table so we — this council, the members — can move forward to the next step of this process of getting this bill passed.”
On the Minnesota House side, Fairbanks said the band is pushing hard for the bill to be heard in committee.
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While White Earth people know their history, and the band’s allies in the Minnesota Legislature know the history, many other people do not.
“We have a lot of people around us who are scared — it’s not us, it’s them — on what we’re going to do with that land,” Fairbanks said.
White Earth will be a good steward of the land, he said. “Because remember, we’re the stewards, we’re the caretakers of this land for thousands of years. We know how to take care of it. We know how to harvest our medicines, we know how to do all of our traditional gatherings out there … our (tribal) DNR has been doing that for years — taking care of that forest.”
Fairbanks said he was due to meet the next day in St. Paul with the governor’s staff and DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen to talk to nonprofits like Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever and snowmobile clubs, and others.
“The heat has been turned down on it — not all are opposed to it anymore,” Fairbanks said, “but they want assurances from me and this council that we’ll leave the ability to hunt and fish and snowmobile on it open to them at least.”
Taking these steps is delicate, he said. “The DNR is the one that is – I’m trying to say this in a nice way – pulling us back,” he said.
White Earth has been doing what it can towards its own land recovery efforts. The tribal land department purchased over 1,100 acres last year, and "this year, as of today, we're looking at 1,200 more," Fairbanks said. "So we're bringing land back — we're buying it."
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