Dennis Anderson: Courts, not the Legislature, should rule on Red Lake, White Earth lands

Hoping to avoid a similar clean-sweep court decision favoring the Mille Lacs Band, the Minnesota DNR at the time, led by commissioner Rod Sando, negotiated a deal that would have given the band an exclusive fishing zone on Lake Mille Lacs, as well as six other lakes and parts of two rivers. The band also would get 7,500 acres of public land and $10 million.

In exchange it would agree not to commercially fish Mille Lacs.

The agreement was subject to approval by the band and the Legislature, and on March 2, 1993, the band voted thumbs-up, 200-134. But the Legislature, subject to intense opposition by hunters, anglers and landowners in the disputed region, killed the deal.

The dispute, the sportsmen and sportswomen said, was properly the province of courts and judges, not the DNR and not politicians.

Notwithstanding the many walleye management challenges that have followed the Supreme Court's Mille Lacs decision, that opinion proved prescient, because what was not known at the time, or at least not known publicly, was that seven other Chippewa bands — Fond du Lac in Minnesota and six from Wisconsin — ultimately would become part of the dispute's resolution because they had signed the same 1837 treaty.

That meant the DNR or the Legislature would have had to negotiate with those bands the same or similar deal it had awarded to the Mille Lacs band, adding levels of politics-infused complexity that would have made the Paris Peace Accords look like a walk in the park.

The point for present purposes is that either the Red Lake Band of Chippewa has legitimate treaty claims or it doesn't. Ditto White Earth — or any other bands or groups.

If they do, those claims should be resolved by courts, and if proved valid, accommodations should be made. What's fair is fair, after all. No one is arguing otherwise.

Granted, adding to a band's land and water inventories by appealing to sympathetic legislators is a lot cheaper than hiring treaty experts and lawyers, and perhaps a quicker way to gain resolutions favoring a band's positions. But not everyone at the Capitol agrees with the approach.

An enrolled member of the White Earth Band, state Sen. Steve Green, R-Fosston, whose district includes both the White Earth and Red Lake reservations, says he wasn't consulted before Rep. Jordan introduced her bill in the House, along with a Senate companion measure authored by Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton.

"Like previous bills brought forth by this author, I was not consulted (and) members of my district that would be affected weren't even informed that this bill would be submitted,'' Green said in a news release last week. "That isn't the way these things should be done. … People are getting blinded by bad bills. It's wrong.''