About three months ago, Mahnomen County sheriff’s deputies and White Earth tribal police raided Todd Thompson’s tobacco shop, seizing around seven pounds of cannabis, along with $3,000 in cash, his cell phone and surveillance system.
The August 2 raid happened the day after recreational marijuana became legal across the state and was the first major enforcement action under the new law.
But no charges have been filed in the case—and the state may not have the authority to prosecute him or any other tribal member for marijuana crimes on reservations.
Thompson, a member of the White Earth Nation, didn’t have a state permit to sell cannabis nor did he have the consent of the tribal council, which voted days earlier to allow adult-use cannabis and sell marijuana cultivated in its tribal-run facility.
For his part, Thompson doesn’t believe he needs the permission of the state or the tribal council to sell marijuana on the reservation under the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s constitution or U.S. treaties with the Ojibwe. That’s why Thompson said he and four other tribal members decided to sell cannabis out in the open from Asema Tobacco and Pipe, the store he’s run for five years in Mahnomen.
“We were pushing our rights,” Thompson said in an interview. “We’re just sick of being held down. And every economic opportunity, we’re held back from.”
They made it hard for law enforcement to ignore, advertising marijuana for sale with Facebook photos and videos showing large jars of green marijuana buds and invited people to come in.
The next day, tribal police and Mahnomen County sheriff’s deputies came to Thompson’s store with a search warrant. In the search warrant application filed in Minnesota district court, a White Earth narcotics investigator said they had seen a Facebook Live video of Thompson promoting the sale, and an undercover agent then purchased cannabis there.
Thompson said police handcuffed him and workers at his store and held them for more than an hour while they searched the premises.
He said they also went to his house, where they broke into his safe and “desecrated” sacred items—he found his eagle feather on the floor and the ashes from his sage bowl dumped onto his white sheets.
“They’re just some rotten, dirty bastards,” Thompson said.
Hellbound and Down 