歪歪漫画

RED LAKE 鈥� All state-owned land and real property within a mile of Upper Red Lake must be given to the Red Lake Nation, along with all state-owned land and real property in the Red Lake State Forest, under a new bill submitted by a DFLer from New Brighton.

The bill, 194, allocates $20 million to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in fiscal year 2026 to purchase private land prior to the turnover.

The one-time appropriation is available until June 30, 2035.

Madelyn Haasken / Bemidji Pioneer

The bill requires the DNR commissioner to 鈥渋dentify any funding restrictions or other legal barriers to conveying land and real property鈥︹��

By Jan. 15, 2026, the commissioner must submit a report to the chairs and ranking minority members of the legislative committees with jurisdiction over the environment and natural resources, noting all legal barriers and recommending how to address them, including any recommended legislation to eliminate the barriers.

The bill is the same as a Minnesota House bill (HF 4780) that was introduced in the last legislative session.

That bill, which did not advance in the Legislature, drew passionate opposition from outdoorsmen and non-tribal members who own or visit property around Upper Red Lake.

Saying the land transfer would right a historical wrong, in 2024 the as it pushed for a similar bill to be approved by the Legislature.

"The United States' illegal disposition of Upper Red Lake does not, and cannot, suffice to diminish the boundaries of the Red Lake Nation," the summary states. "We respectfully urge the Department of the Interior to rectify the United States' past wrongdoing, and restore and affirm the boundaries of the Red Lake Nation as Red Lake leaders originally intended in 1889."

A bill that would have turned state-owned land in the White Earth State Forest over to the White Earth Nation also faced a tsunami of non-tribal opposition and failed to gain traction in the legislature last year, although the tribe has had success in working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service towards co-managing the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge.

The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe celebrated a historic milestone in June last year with the return of more than 11,000 acres of ancestral land that had been part of the Chippewa National Forest.

The Leech Lake Restoration Act was signed by President Donald Trump in December 2020, reverting land taken illegally by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1940s.