We wish you could have been with us in Washington, D.C. this past
December 2nd. We traveled there with a couple dozen friends from Minnesota to hear oral
arguments for the Mille Lacs band vs. Minnesota treaty lawsuit before the Supreme Court Of
the United States of America.
For me, personally, the hearing was the culmination of a very long and
arduous journey. It was a twelve year trip which had all of the physical, mental, and
financial woes of a grueling expedition.
Nine years ago, with $500,000 of your federal tax dollars, the Mille
Lacs band sued the citizens of the state of Minnesota to put commercial gill nets in all
the public waters of a huge area of our state. The Fond du Lac and White Earth bands also
filed law suits. The three treaty claims covered the northern two thirds of Minnesota and
extended into North and South Dakota. A public notice had been filed by the Sioux, that
land claims were also forthcoming for huge areas of Southern Minnesota.
Having studied the issue for three years, it looked to me like at least
eighty percent of Minnesota, which is all "ceded territory," was destined for
social and economic chaos caused by changing Federal Indian Policies. Most of these
changes have happened since the American Indian Movement was formed in the 60’s in
Minneapolis.
With a handful of people, including former Minnesota Vikings head coach
Bud Grant, we started a "Save Minnesota" campaign and created a
plan to intervene private landowners as full parties to the law suits. We intervened
landowners in the Mille Lac and Fond du Lac cases, and we were just getting ready to
intervene in the White Earth case when it was put on hold, probably pending the outcome of
the other two lawsuits.
Private property owners clearly have individual interests that extend
beyond the state’s interests in providing access to, and managing the public’s
resources. Governors and Attorneys General may not be able to, or be interested in,
protecting the interests of private landowners in treaty cases. If they don’t you
need to form an organization, get legal representation and file to intervene as full
parties to the case.
We first had to stop a secretly negotiated settlement in the Minnesota
legislature while we were going through three appeals in court for landowner intervention.
We then had to appeal three times in the federal court system to reach the Supreme Court.
Through the efforts of an organization called Proper Economic Resource Management, Inc. we
raised over $1,500,000.00 and still have a couple hundred- thousand dollars of debt to pay
off. The good side to this story is that we should win this case and save our state from
what has happened in Canada. Then through CERA and CIRCA we can help you save your states.
Twenty years ago my partner and I bought a fishing camp on the Canadian
border. We immediately got involved in a sportsfishing vs. commercial gill netting battle
that was raging on most Canadian border waters. At the time, sportsfishing tourism was $18
million per year in Lake of the Woods County. The commercial gill netting was seriously
overharvesting the resource and resorts were being run out of business. It didn’t
take much studying to figure out that a tourist at a resort would spend hundreds, or even
a thousand dollars to take home a limit of twelve walleye fillets while a gill netter
would only receive $1-$3 per pound for the same fish, using nets that sometimes reach a
mile in length. After a three year battle, we had legislation passed in Minnesota to buy
out twenty commercial fishermen’s quotas on Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake.
Since the gill nets were eliminated, sportsfishing tourism has
skyrocketed to over $70 million in Lake of the Woods County, and created a very robust
economy with no unemployment.
Seventy miles south of Lake of the Woods sits Red Lake, one of the
premier walleye lakes in the world. Part of the lake is on the Red Lake Reservation. The
Red lake band has completely depleted the fishery with gill netting, bankrupting over
twenty resorts and seriously damaging the local economy. Unemployment is over 65% and
social costs are enormous in an area that should have the same booming economy as Lake of
the Woods. Even when Red Lake had fish, the only people who benefited were a few netters
who split-up a million dollars annually. The other reservation citizens were saying
"we need jobs!" They had been cheated out of the jobs at hotels, restaurants,
and retail stores that a well managed resource provides through sportsfishing tourism.
Property values also escalate around a well-managed fishery, which brings building trade
jobs as landowners invest in their properties.
Meanwhile, on the Canadian side of my lake, for the past decade, the
Canadian Government has been systematically tearing apart its huge
sportsfishing-tourism-based economy by turning over control of its territory and natural
resources to its "First Nation" citizens.
Fish fillets that could be worth $90- $150 per pound, are gill netted
and cross the border by the truckload for $1- $3 per pound. As over harvest occurs,
because of the gill netting, officials then restrict water access to sportsfishing
tourists and cut their resource allocation. It is not hard to figure out why the U.S.
dollar is worth $1.49 in Canada.
You only have to look at the Canadian economy to see the devastation
caused by race-based control of territory and natural resources. Just recently, Ottawa
Chief Justice Antonio Lamer gave control of 95 percent of the British Columbia land mass
to 4.9 percent of the population while writing the majority decision in a treaty lawsuit
Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia. This decision will plunge British Columbia’s economy
and public finances into confusion and dysfunction, according to David Hanley of the
Fraser Institute of Vancouver.
CERA is the only national organization in our country that is educating
U.S. citizens about the ramifications of bad Federal Indian Policies. For almost three
years we have been writing to officials and the media about the missing $2.5 billion from
the Tribal Trust accounts. Did some of this money that was funneled to the Tribes under
the guise of "Economic Development" end up funding lawsuits against the very
citizens who provided it?
If you cherish living in our great country where everyone is supposed
to be treated equally, and have an equal share of its bounty, please help us spread the
word. You can start by attending our annual meeting in Washington D.C. in May. Lets all
get together to "Save the U.S.A."