Tag: native americans

Minnesota Tribe Opens State’s First Recreational Marijuana Store Off Reservation Lands, As Cities Plan Government-Run Dispensaries

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.”

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Minnesota Signs First-Of-Its-Kind Agreement Allowing Indian Tribe To Sell Legal Marijuana Outside Reservation

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) has signed a landmark agreement with the White Earth Nation that will allow the tribe to operate up to eight retail marijuana stores across the state. Already the tribe is preparing to open storefronts in Moorhead and St. Cloud.

Walz signed the new compact on Tuesday, making White Earth Nation—also known as the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe—the first tribal entity in the state to reach an agreement with the state on selling legal cannabis outside of tribal land.

Notably, Minnesota’s 2023 cannabis legalization law allows tribes within the state to open marijuana businesses before state licensing of businesses begins. Following the law’s enactment, a number of tribal governments, including White Earth Nation, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, made early moves to enter the market.

Minnesota officials said the next compact with another tribe could be signed within a few weeks.

The new agreement with White Earth will allow the storefronts to be located off tribal land but still be regulated by tribal authorities. It also requires at least some distance between the storefronts, with the tribe limited to no more than one retail location per city and three per county.

Under the compact, White Earth will also be able to open marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facilities off of tribal land and engage in wholesale transactions, transportation and delivery of cannabis.

The interim director of the Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), Eric Taubel, described the state’s new deal with White Earth Nation to local reporters as a “nation-leading approach to cannabis compacting.”

“We’ll be the first state where not only are tribes operating cannabis businesses off tribal land, but they’re also doing so under tribal regulatory authority,” he told The Minnesota Star-Tribune, adding that Minnesota cannabis regulators will still be permitted to conduct an annual facility inspection and can take further steps if they believe stores are selling risky products.

Taubel also said that while the White Earth compact allows up to eight dispensary locations, he doubts that any of the 11 recognized tribal nations in Minnesota will actually open that many.

“Candidly, I don’t suspect any tribe will get past about three to four stores for the next two years just because of the actual cost in setting up these stores,” Taubel said.

Zach Wilson, CEO of Waabigwan Mashkiki—White Earth Nation’s cannabis business—told the Star-Tribune that the first off-reservation store could open as soon as this weekend.

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One Out Of Four Indian Tribes In The U.S. Is Now Involved In Marijuana Or Hemp Programs, New Map Shows

A new infographic from an advocacy group representing Native American tribes in the legal cannabis industry shows that more than a fourth of Indigenous communities in the continental United States are now involved with marijuana or hemp programs.

The map, created by the Indigenous Cannabis Industry Association (ICIA) in collaboration with the law firm Vicente, shows the locations of more than 100 tribal marijuana and hemp programs across the country.

Overall, approximately 26 percent of the 358 federally recognized Indigenous communities in the continental U.S. are now involved in some sort of cannabis program, the groups said.

The data, they said in a press release, “shows that the Indigenous cannabis industry is trending upward in terms of jobs, community development, and overall industry growth, with many Tribes currently scaling to meet demands for global cannabis distribution.”

“Since the first regulated Indigenous cannabis storefront opened almost 10 years ago in Washington State,” the groups said, “dozens of sovereign Indigenous communities have created their own unique regulatory systems to govern cannabis cultivation, production and sales.”

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22 More People, Entities Charged in Arizona Medicaid Fraud Scheme

An Arizona grand jury has indicted 22 individuals and entities linked to a massive Medicaid fraud scheme involving sober living homes.

The charges include money laundering, theft, conspiracy, fraudulent schemes, patient referral fraud, and forgery, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Tuesday.

These indictments are part of an ongoing investigation into a $2.7 billion fraud that exploited Arizona’s health care system, particularly targeting Native Americans seeking treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

According to the charge document, the 20 individuals indicted are associated with a church and a mental health organization called Happy House Behavioral Health. Prosecutors allege that Happy House was paid over $60 million for services that were either never rendered or only partially completed. Some of the billing, they say, was for clients who were deceased or incarcerated.

Prosecutors also allege that sober living facilities referred clients to Happy House, which in turn received funds from the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), the state’s Medicaid agency. Happy House then allegedly paid the referring sober homes for those client placements, an arrangement at the center of the fraudulent scheme charges.

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A law that helped convert Indigenous people is now used to get churches near—and on—school grounds

Earlier this year, a small school district just north of Tucson made an unusual decision: It would allow the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to build a complex on public school district grounds where students could be released from class to worship.

But the project quickly unraveled. A few weeks later, the Vail Unified School District reversed course, saying the church canceled the contract after local media reports and secular groups criticized the plan. Still, the construction of religious buildings near schools for the temporary release of students to practice their faith has become a growing concern of church-state separation advocates, who argue it violates legal requirements that keep public schools secular.

In Arizona and several other states, ‘release time’ for religious instruction is not only legal—it’s common.

State law allows students to be excused from school during the day to participate in religious instruction off campus. In the case of LDS students, these classes often include lifestyle lessons. They are typically held in buildings just outside campus boundaries, sometimes only a few hundred feet away.

Religious conservatives have pushed to expand release-time programs nationwide, arguing there is no need to separate religion from daily education. Here, such programs are only growing more popular.

Arizona’s history with religious release time

More than a dozen states currently require school districts to adopt release-time policies.

Most recently, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed a bill in February mandating school districts create a release-time policy after two districts rescinded theirs. Previously, Ohio law didn’t require districts to offer the program. The new law, known as the Parents’ Bill of Rights, also bans discussions of sexuality or gender identity before fourth grade.

The Guardian reported that the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, designated an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has helped draft model legislation for states to expand release-time programs. This gives parents more authority over their children’s ‘moral and religious’ upbringing, often limiting exposure to diverse communities and families.

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Montana Lawmakers Pass Bill Allowing Cannabis Compacts Between Indian Tribes And The Governor

Though House Bill 952 is only two pages long, it has the potential to have major impacts on Montana tribes, according to those who advocated for its passage.

Sponsored by Rep. Frank Smith, D-Poplar, Sioux, the bill was requested by the State-Tribal Relations Interim Committee to help tribes navigate barriers in entering and engaging in the cannabis industry. It cleared the Legislature earlier this month, getting support from most Democratic legislators and enough majority Republicans to pass.

This is Smith’s last year as a legislator before retirement. He was first elected in 1999 and is one of the longest-serving current members. During a recent Montana American Indian Caucus meeting, Smith was wished a happy retirement and congratulated for ending with what members called such an impactful bill.

Many of the challenges tribes face in growing and selling marijuana stem from past legislation. House Bill 701, a 153-page bill that became law in 2021, established laws to regulate newly legalized recreational cannabis. The bill placed major constrictions on tribes in regards to cannabis regulations.

HB 701 created three major hurdles for tribes when it was enacted.

First, it only allowed for one combined-use marijuana licence per tribe, meaning each tribe could only have one location for growing, packaging, distributing and selling cannabis.

Second, it restricted tribes to a single-tier canopy licence, meaning a tribe’s dispensary and the growing operation must consist in a maximum of a single 1,000-square-foot building.

Third, it required tribes to build dispensaries at least 150 miles outside of reservation boundaries and in a “green county” that allows the sale of cannabis, essentially restricting tribes to operate in highly saturated markets, an issue raised by Patrick Yawakie, co-founder of Red Medicine, LLC, an organization that provides professional civic engagement and lobbying services to tribes.

Yawakie said this year’s HB 952 will address many of those barriers. He helped draft the bill and said its language was mainly pulled from the Washington state-tribal cannabis compact, which allows Washington tribes and the state enter into agreements to regulate and define cannabis operations within their reservations. Twenty-two out of the 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington have compacts with the state and more are in the process.

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Minnesota Judge Rules That Native American Man Can Be Prosecuted Over Marijuana Possession On Reservation Despite State Legalization

A Minnesota district court judge ruled that the state may prosecute Native Americans on most reservations for possessing large amounts of marijuana, allowing a felony case against a White Earth man to proceed.

The ruling is the first—though likely not the last—to address state law enforcement’s jurisdiction over marijuana in Indian Country since Minnesota legalized its recreational use in 2023.

Todd Thompson, a White Earth citizen, faces a felony possession charge with a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for selling marijuana without a license from his tobacco store in Mahnomen on the White Earth reservation.

Mahnomen County sheriff’s deputies and White Earth tribal police raided his store on August 2, 2023, a day after recreational cannabis became legal in Minnesota, and seized about 7.5 pounds of cannabis, 433 grams of marijuana wax and $2,748 in cash along with Thompson’s cell phone and surveillance system.

Thompson asked Mahnomen County District Judge Seamus Duffy to dismiss the charge, arguing that the state doesn’t have the legal jurisdiction to prosecute him.

Under what’s called Public Law 280, Minnesota has the power to prosecute tribal members on certain reservations including White Earth’s for criminal acts but not civil or regulatory violations of state law. Thompson and his attorney, Claire Glenn, argued that after cannabis was legalized in Minnesota, possessing and selling the drug became a regulatory matter, not a criminal one.

The judge, in a ruling issued earlier this month, disagreed. He wrote that the possession of “non-personal, non-recreational amounts of marijuana in public is generally prohibited,” and that just because the state may issue licenses to businesses to sell marijuana, doesn’t mean it’s only a regulatory matter. He pointed to a case in which a White Earth man was convicted of possessing a pistol without a permit on tribal land.

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Minnesota Lawmakers, Cities And Businesses Raise Alarm Over State’s Pending Marijuana Contracts With Tribal Nations

People interested in the recreational cannabis market who are not Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) or leaders of the state’s tribal nations have been asking when, where and how they can present their views on imminent state-tribal cannabis compacts.

The answer is: They can’t. The pending compacts that are now expected to allow the state’s tribal nations to enter the legal cannabis business outside of their reservations will not be made public until they are signed by Walz and the tribes. Once signed, they would be the first state-tribal cannabis compacts in the U.S. to allow tribal enterprises to operate outside of reservation lands, and they can’t be amended without mutual agreement.

That leaves lawmakers, local governments and potential cannabis business people to raise issues publicly with little expectation that they will be considered by state negotiators. Walz endorsed the basic tenets of the deal—that the tribes would get a large chunk of the off-reservation market and be allowed to open their stores well before non-tribal stores can open.

“They’re great partners in this. They know how to do this,” Walz said. “Many of them are ahead, obviously enough to set up for them and their sovereignty, to be cultivating. So I think we’re in good shape, and I think they’ll be executed in the near future. And I think that’s the first step in a broader market that is going to be big, and it’ll shake itself out over time.”

He said having tribal stores open first “lets us get out there.”

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Biden Awarded $50 Million to Obscure Nonprofit on Tribal Land in Last-Minute Heist – But Trump Admin Launched Probe and Stopped Disbursement!

Biden went on a spending spree and handed out $1 billion in grants to various organization in the last couple of weeks of his presidency.

As part of his spending spree in the final days of his administration, Joe Biden awarded $50 million to an obscure 501(c)(3) nonprofit on tribal land with a charity leader who has a shady history of mismanaging money, according to The Washington Examiner.

However, the Trump Administration launched an investigation and stopped the disbursements.

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Alaska Natives say Biden’s last act against oil and gas makes them more eager for Trump’s return

With only a few days remaining in his presidency, Joe Biden took one more parting shot at the oil and gas industry — and Alaska Natives — Thursday. The Department of Interior recommended that approximately 3 million more acres in Alaska’s 23-million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) region be protected from development. The announcement also provides direction for additional protections for impacts to “subsistence use,” which are areas used by Alaska Natives for traditional fishing and hunting. 

“This is just another slap in the face as Biden heads out the door. It was always about pushing his radical agenda and propping up his eco-elitist friends,” Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, an energy advocacy group, told Just the News.

Indigenous voices

While presented as an expansion of protections for Alaska Native traditions, native communities in the North Slope have long been critical of the Biden-Harris administration’s attacks on oil and gas in the region, which they say provide needed economic development. Besides the jobs the industry provides, the tax revenues support infrastructure development in an area that previously had little. 

“The Biden administration is selectively citing Indigenous voices, while ignoring wide swaths of the North Slope Iñupiat, and fails to understand the implications of this announcement. Instead, it listened to voices that agreed with its policy agenda to justify its actions while ignoring the overwhelming majority of North Slope residents and locally elected leaders who opposed today’s decision,” Nagruk Harcharek, President of the Voice of Arctic Iñupiat (VOICE), said in a statement. 

The VOICE, which represents 21 communities and companies in the North Slope, spent years trying to gain an audience with Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, only to have her continually ignore their requests. Finally in June, Haaland met with representatives of the VOICE.

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