Minnesota Native News

The Red Lake Nation has 12-hundred new citizens!

The tribal council voted to approve their enrollment at their February 11th meeting.

This is the first wave of new enrollees after a resolution passed last year changed the blood quantum rules for tribal citizenship.

Reporter Melissa Townsend tells us more. 

[meeting sound] 

In the Facebook Live video of the February 11th meeting, there is an overflow crowd seated in front of the tribal council.

There is some discussion about whether this is a good idea - to allow 1200 new enrollees into the tribe. 

[A lot of people think they’re going to come here and get free medical, free everything…] (:10)

But eventually the tribal chair calls a vote and the tribal council says yes. 

And they welcome 1,212 new Red Lake citizens to the tribe.

[welcome home, chi miigwech] 

Simone Senogles is sitting in the room watching the discussion and the vote. Her mother is a Red Lake citizen. But she was not. 

SENOGLES: I’ve always wanted to be officially enrolled in my family’s homelands.

Growing up, Simone spent the school year in South Minneapolis, but her summers were in Red Lake. 

SENOGLES: I spent summers up there with my uncle Bradley Senogles, probably one of the proudest Red Lakers who ever walked the earth.  (:08)

She would watch him set nets and clean fish.  

As a teenager, he taught Simone how on the Red Lake back roads. 

SENOGLES: He had this little house with a picture window in the front and the driveway went right up to the house. And I remember seeing all my little cousins looking at me out the window and I almost didn’t press the break in time.  And I could hear my uncle saying wo, wo, wo, my girl, wo. [laughter] (:23)

Simone says she always wanted to be enrolled in her tribe. 

SENOGLES: You know it’s like that’s my family, that’s our homeland. But on paper, I don’t officially belong. (:07)

But now — she does. 

With the tribal council’s decision to approve the new enrollees, Simone is now an official Red lake citizen. 

SENOGLES: I cried when they made the decision. It was funny because here I am almost 50 years old and there was this young girl there. And she cried too.  And I was just thinking man, this is really affecting generations now and into the future.

STRONG: That’s the good part of it, seeing the people all in the audience that were very much impacted because their families could finally come home.

Sam Strong is the Secretary of the Red Lake Nation.  

He shepherded tribal council action to change blood quantum rules and paved the way for these new tribal citizens.

STRONG: I see blood quantum as mathmatical genocide. Its’ like a cliff. That’s the way it’s been best described to me.  When you get a certain number of band members who are in a certain blood quantum range, the next generation isn’t enrollable. And so for us, 85% of our population was between 1/4 and 1/2 blood quantum. (:24)

With those numbers, STrong says, within a 100 years there would be no Red Lake citizens.

But changing blood quantum rules scares folks for a lot of reasons - one of which is a possible big bump in enrollment. 

STRONG: How do you make a change that doesn’t drastically impact the tribe and inundate its resources etc. with too many tirbal members?

Strong says the council projects there will be a 10% bump in enrollment; that’s1500 to 2500 new enrollees. 

They will study the impact on their recourses and decide what needs to happen next.

Just a few days ago, Simone Senogles got her official letter in the mail welcoming her to the tribe. 

It lays out the benefits of being a Red lake citizen and also the responsibilities…

SENOGLES: As an heir to our beautiful homeland, held in common by our people since time immemorial, you now share in the responsibility of sustaining and protecting our pristine environment, our natural resources, and carry on the legacy of our inheritance, our sovereignty, customs and traditions.  The Red Lake band of Chippewa Indians welcomes you.  

It’s really really - it’s really a big thing. It’s something I waited my whole life for. 

Sam Strong expects more enrollment applications for Red Lake citizenship throughout the year. 

For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend. 

MARIE: This is Minnesota Native News. I’m Marie Rock.
This week on Minnesota Native News… The Minnesota Attorney General sides with tribal leaders in affirming that the Mille Lacs Band Indian Reservation still exists and has not been diminished…

And… We get an update on a major renovation… now approved for the American Indian Magnet School in St. Paul.

First up… Minnesota’s attorney general has reversed a decades-old policy position and now the state affirms that the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation still exists.

According to Mille Lacs Band Of Ojibwe Chief Executive Melanie Benjamin… the date Wednesday, Feb. 19th will go down in history… because on this date the official position of the State of Minnesota changed…. declaring that the reservation exists and was never diminished or re-established.

She said this means that quote “the State is in agreement that the original boundaries negotiated by our Tribal Leaders in 1855 are fully intact and always have been!” unquote

In a legal filing earlier this week, Attorney General Keith Ellison backed the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s assertion that 61-thousand acres across the south shore of Mille Lacs Lake… belong to the band.

Governor Tim Walz reportedly also supports Ellison’s move.

Ellison declared this position in a court filing… in response to a lawsuit filed against the State of Minnesota by elected officials of Mille Lacs County.

Mille Lacs County officials had argued that the State must pay their attorney fees in an ongoing dispute between the band and the county over who pays for law enforcement…. because the County was supporting the position that the reservation boundaries no longer exist.

Mille Lacs County officials believe the band has only a few thousand acres.

In this historical reversal… The State actually disputed the County’s request and wrote quote: “The County Attorney and County Sheriff are not acting on behalf of the State because the State’s position is that the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation has never been diminished or disestablished” unquote.

So, after years of contention whether the reservation or boundaries exist, it is now the position of State of Minnesota that the original boundaries negotiated by Tribal Leaders in 1855… are fully intact.

Mille Lacs County officials are reportedly warning of the impacts of the move, saying it may impact multiple government functions quote, “from business licenses to taxes to environmental regulations to perhaps southern-shore access to some of the lake’s prized walleye-fishing waters.” unquote.

But… Mille Lacs Band Of Ojibwe Chief Melanie Benjamin disagrees. She says the band has no authority or intent to impose business licenses or taxes on our non-Indian neighbors.

Benjamin said quote: “The EPA has exercised environmental jurisdiction on the reservation for many years without incident and there is no reason to expect this to change. Access to and regulation of the Mille Lacs walleye fishery also will not change” unquote.

Benjamin noted that while the acknowledgment changes nothing for non-native neighbors, it has great meaning to her people.

------

In other news, the American Indian Magnet school on the east side of St. Paul has school board approval for a multi-million dollar… major renovation.

According to the Star Tribune, the school was among multiple construction projects, which were approved by the St. Paul school board on Tuesday, Feb. 18.

The remodel was previously estimated to cost $23-point-one million dollars, but that price jumped to $53-point-three million dollars after an external review.

The sharp increase in price prompted the school board to reconsider plans to start from scratch and build a new school, priced at nearly $89 million dollars.

The community pushed back, however, concerned over how the new school would disconnect their neighborhood. The pow wow space would have also been moved to a location away from the school’s parking lot.

In the end, the school board sided with those concerns and approved the reconstruction.

The school board also approved plans for improvements to the Frost Lake Elementary, Phalen Lake Hmong Studies Magnet, and the District Service Facility.

Laurie Stern reports on three events that highlight indigenous people's relationship with water.

Every week in the summer groups of people gather at the Native American Medicine Garden the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. They come to talk about indigenous knowledge of plants and the ecosystem here. Reporter Melissa Townsend recently got her own lesson from the garden’s caretaker, Francis Bettelyoun.

This week on Minnesota Native News we get a round up of tribal election news, we hear about the latest Nibi walk along the Wisconsin River and learn about the Native artists receiving statewide honors.

Treaty Rights, Climate Justice, and Decolonization were discussed in packed house in Duluth… and Franklin Avenue bustled with energy for Open Streets Minneapolis.

This week on Minnesota Native News, hard work is underway to address the housing crisis – and the wild rice harvest begins.

Concerned community members come together to show support to those battling addiction in Mille Lacs, and jazz guitarist Briand Morrison talks about his and his father’s art.

This week reporter Melissa Townsend has the latest on a homeless tent camp in Minneapolis. There are roughly 300 people - mostly Native - in the camp. Some are calling it “The Wall of Forgotten Natives”

This week on Minnesota Native News, we get an update on the Minneapolis homeless encampment, also known as “the wall of forgotten natives.” We also hear about a new police agreement between the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe and the county sheriff’s office that ends a two-year impasse.