A Native American tribe over the weekend opened Minnesota’s first-ever legal recreational marijuana store outside of a reservation. The new shop, in Moorhead, will be followed next month by another location in St. Cloud that will also be operated by the White Earth Nation.
Meanwhile, as Minnesota’s adult-use cannabis market gets up and running, more than a dozen cities and counties are seeking to open their own, government-run stores.
“This has never been done before, being the first to be able to open an off-reservation dispensary, let alone just the first dispensary in the state,” Zach Wilson, CEO of White Earth Nation’s cannabis business, Waabigwan Mashkiki, told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) about the Moorhead store.
The launch of the new shop comes after Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) signed of a landmark agreement earlier this month to allow the tribe to operate up to eight retail marijuana stores across the state.
Everything the store sells “is all completely vertical, seed to sale,” with products grown, processed and packaged by Waabigwan Mashkiki—which means flower medicine in Ojibway—Wilson said. “The only thing we don’t manufacture is our beverages, but everything else absolutely, completely in house.”
Hellbound and Down 