Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – Members of the White Earth Nation held their State of the Nation Address on May 3 in Mahnomen.
The speeches highlighted many of their accomplishments and initiatives over the last year, as well as, talked about reclaiming tribal lands.
Mike Fairbanks, tribal chairman for the White Earth Nation, said the council purchased apartments in Bemidji and a Detroit Lakes hotel to address drug abuse aftercare and homelessness on tribal land.
“We bought the Ridgeway Apartments in Bemidji,” said Fairbanks. “Because that’s one thing that we struggle with. Even though we have four clinics to help our people that are dealing with opioids, but we have no place to place our families once they leave treatment.”
He also complimented the nation’s wild rice harvest, which gathered 172,000 pounds of wild rice in August and September.
“Why we are here is because of that mahnomen, the food that grows on water,” he said. “It’s so important and it’s so engrained in all of us as a people and it’s also something that’s really spiritual in our heart.”
The tribal chairman then said he’s been speaking with both federal and state officials about reclaiming areas of land in coming years, specifically the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge and the White Earth State Forest.
“They asked us and said, ‘what do you want to do with this’, and I said, ‘I want it back,’ we want it back,” Fairbanks said. “42,000 acres and we want it back in White Earth hands. That was taken away from us back in the 1930s, so that’s one area I’m working hard on is taking back Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge.”
Fairbanks told the crowd he has a meeting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on May 18 to discuss Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge.
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