The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

There is so much going on at the capital that it’s hard for the average outdoor guy to follow it all. I have two issues I want to share. One will be this week and the second to follow in my next column.

The first is of the Native tribes and the land givebacks that have happened and several others that are proposed to happen if certain bills pass this session or any session for that matter in Minnesota.

Numerous news outlets have covered the passing of the Upper Sioux Agency State Park back to the native people who occupied it before European settlement. There is so much I do not know about Indian Reservations and other lands that are referred to as Ceded Territories.

What I do think I know is that all of what happened regarding these lands happened many generations ago. It’s kind of like blaming me for slavery when none of my ancestors ever owned a slave.

With the transfer of this State Park back to a native tribe there seems to be a floodgate that has opened with multiple additional transfers now being considered. The one that comes to mind first is the bill to transfer the White Earth State Forest back to the White Earth Tribe. The State Park was not a very large area but the State Forest in play now is well over 100,000 acres. In some prior cases, these lands can only be used by tribal members and in other cases they remain open to non-band members at least for the current time.

If you owned a hunting cabin for the past 40 years within the boundaries of this State Forest but could no longer traverse the roads used to get to it, how might you feel?

There is another larger looming potential transfer, and this one has the potential to affect even larger numbers of non-band members. I would with confidence state that thousands of anglers would be affected. The proposal in some draft form would transfer about 1/3 of Upper Red Lake back to the tribe. Right now, all of Lower Red Lake and the majority of Upper Red Lake is already off-limits to non-band members. The proposal under consideration would transfer all the balance of Upper Red Lake and a one-mile buffer zone around the shores of this fishery back to the Red Lake Band.

A couple of big differences exist with the requests from the Upper Sioux Community and those by tribes in northern Minnesota.  The four Dakota tribes in southern Minnesota had all treaty rights and land taken away following the U.S. Dakota War.  The USC exists on less than 1,000 acres, is not a reservation, and they have no treaty rights.  In comparison, the Red Lake Reservation is made up of 840,000 acres.  The White Earth Reservation contains 830,000 acres.  Both of these tribes do have treaty rights when it comes to harvesting natural resources.

The 1,300 acres returned to USC had extraordinary cultural significance to the tribe and was the site of starvation and death of the Dakota people in the summer of 1862.  The hundreds of thousands of acres being requested by the northern tribes do not have this type of cultural significance. 

I have fished Upper Red Lake for the better part of the last 20 years and have seen the investment made by many non-band businesses in the form of resorts built and guide services developed. This potential land transfer affects a ton of folks who have invested their lives into Upper Red Lake. I know many of them whose livelihoods would be destroyed.

Upper Red Lake was in total chaos when the fishery collapsed years ago from overfishing by tribes and to some extent sport anglers.  It took years to rebuild this fishery and most of the dollars spent to do it came from the Minnesota DNR. It is one of the greatest success stories of any fishery in North America.

There has been a long-documented history of tribes and Minnesota’s’ wildlife agencies cooperating to better manage both state and non-state lands. There is a history of working together.

There has certainly been a substantial increased emergence of tribal issues in the state of Minnesota over the past 3-5 years with many of these issues now rising to the top of many politicians’ list of importance. It is critically important when seemingly trying to right the wrongs of 200 years ago that the “just give it back” thought process does not forget those folks who will suffer that had nothing to do with perpetrating those wrongs.

We need to be thoughtful and diligent when these discussions are taking place to not rush to an outcome solely for political goals. The proposed transfers and the ones that already happened have taken place with no renumeration of any kind. There has been no talk of land transfers in exchange for the elimination of netting rights or reductions in ongoing state payments made to tribes in some cases to stop netting.

This is such a complicated issue, and I certainly don’t have any of the answers but I can say as a 63-year old who has been hunting and fishing in Minnesota for more than 50 years, we need to make sound decisions and not political ones.

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.