TRIBAL NATIONS FROM MINNESOTA HONOR SENATOR TINA SMITH

Tribal leaders from across the Midwest were in Washington D.C. March 23 through 27, 2025 to attend the MAST Impact week. The Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes (MAST) mis sion is to advance, protect, preserve, and enhance the mutual interests, treaty rights, sovereignty, and cultural way of life of the sovereign nations of the Midwest throughout the 21st century. Tribes included are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa.

Tribal Government News

MILLE LACS FOUNDATION DONATES TO LOCAL HOSPITAL

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Foundation has donated $250,000 to the Mille Lacs Area Health Foundation in support of the Mille Lacs Health System’s (MLHS) Next Chapter project, helping to bring the hospital’s expansion and modernization ef forts to completion. This contribution will provide funding for key areas within the new facility, including the Ambulance Ga rage, an Emergency Observation Exam Room, the Kitchen, and the Laboratory.

IT’S EZIGAA-TICK SEASON: PREVENTION FOR HUMANS AND OUR PETS

Being surrounded by our woods and brushy land here in Mille Lacs challenges us to do our best to understand and prevent tick-borne illnesses to keep our families and pets free from get ting sick. While ticks come out once it warms up, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources notes that risks for wood and deer tick-related illness increase from mid-May through mid-July, due to the ‘nymph state’ of the deer tick specifically feeding (meaning looking for us and our pets), but lower in early spring and fall, when the adult state of the deer tick is active.

TAMARACK MINE SNAPSHOT: WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Mine permitting is not a fast or straightforward process. Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe leaders, including the Water Over Nickel team, are monitoring the evolving future of the proposed Tamarack Nickel mine from Talon metals. 2025 has already brought changes related to regulatory reviews, ongoing discussions with the Department of Natural Resources and shifting demand for nickel as a critical mineral for renewable energy efforts. Throughout all this change, the Mille Lacs Band’s dedication to protecting clean water is unchanging.

PERCH EXTRAVAGANZA OR MODERATION?

In what sometimes feels like an entire lifetime ago, I can remember villages of ice shanties gathering around Mille Lacs for their chance at their trophy-caliber walleye overnight with an occasional eelpout mixed in. But during February and be yond, while there is still ice upon the lake, the real trophy was the jumbo, yellow perch Mille Lacs once offered in what seemed like a bottomless abundance.

Documentation in Minnesota shows that the history of harvest and possession limits of perch has been forced to be reduced multiple times in the last 50 years, and when fishermen of days past boasted about bringing home a truck bed full of fish day, after day, after day, we began to wonder at what point is this going to stay sustainable? Fast forward 50 years, with the last 12-15 years’ worth of changing landscape through advancements in technology, invasive species, poor hatch rates, and poor year-class recruitment of both walleye and yellow perch we have found ourselves in an interesting predicament that resembles the same reasoning as the last shift in resource management around the yellow perch of Mille Lacs and greater Minnesota.

THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY OF FAMILY SERVICES IS FAMILY FIRST

"The biggest takeaway from today is that Family Services is always going to be about family first," Health and Human Ser vices Commissioner Nicole Anderson said. The Family Services Department is going through a major makeover to ensure its goal of family preservation. They are currently in active strategic planning to ensure a better future for the children and families of the Mille Lacs Band.

Highlights

CRAFTS AT THE ALU DISTRICT I

Mille Lacs Band Elder Carol Hernandez is well-known and often envied for her creative skills and talents with crafts. It is a gift. And one that she willingly shares with anyone who wants to learn. Sometimes, simply hanging out with some friends while putting crafts together is a gift in and of itself. Hernandez and her friends at the District I Assisted Living Unit often sit at the table to create crafts and chitchat about this or that all while Hernandez teaches and demonstrates how to make something useful from everyday items such as leftover fabric, pieces of nature, and just about anything else she can dream up. In Early March the ladies sat down to create their own greeting cards made from leftover fabric.

MEET NCAI YOUTH COUNCIL'S NEW CO-VICE PRESIDENT

Chiminising Band member Rihanna Smith is a senior at Isle High School who will be graduating this June with her high school diploma as well as an Associate’s degree from Central Lakes College through the Post-Secondary Education Opportunity (PSEO) program. She is involved in sports year-round such as basketball (since the 4th grade), track, and cross country. She tried her hand at volleyball and golf as well and loved them both as well. She took some time off to explore the theater with the one-act play and participated in speech. Her academic interests are in math, “But I don’t like proofs,” she laughed. She also likes algebra, critical thinking, psychology, criminal justice, and English.

CELEBRATING TREATY RIGHTS DAY

The 26th Annual Treaty Rights Day celebration was held on Friday, March 21, 2025 at the Mille Lacs Grand Casino Events and Convention Center. The event marks the anniversary of the day of the Supreme Court decision confirming the rights for tribes to hunt, fish, and gather within the ceded territory of the 1837 treaty on March 24, 1999. "Today, the United States kept a promise — a promise that our rights are not just words on paper," said the late Marge Anderson, Chief Executive at the time.

Celebrating Art Gahbow

Art Gahbow's birthday is April 26, 1935. The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is proud to celebrate his leadership each year with a holiday in his honor. This year, the holiday will fall on April 25, 2025.

ZIISIBAAKADAKE – SUGAR MOON

As the month of March came to an end, we round out an other year tapping maple trees and sharing the woods with our loved ones in the very same location that our family has tapped since the beginning of our family’s verbal history. To walk the same woods, with remnants of old tin sap collection cans among the very same trees, or at least the offspring, that our grandparent’s grandparents tapped is incredibly empowering.

Indian Country News

‘It’s something you never get over’: Red Lake grieves on 20th anniversary of school shooting

A ceremony on Friday honored the memories of the 10 killed in the state’s deadliest school shooting. When Missy Dodds hugs someone, she holds them long and hard and doesn’t let go. “It’s almost like my heart talks to their heart,” she said. “They know my worst day. They were there. I don’t even have to say anything.” The former Red Lake High School teacher on Friday embraced f irst responders and her students — who were ninth-graders 20 years ago — when gunfire erupted in her classroom in a mass shooting that forever changed this community. On March 21, 2005, f ive students and a teacher were killed in Dodds' classroom before the shooter turned the gun on himself. To this day, Dodds says student-survivor Jeff May saved her life with a No. 2 pencil he used to attack the shooter. More than 100 people gathered Friday in the high school gymnasium for a drum circle, prayer and meal to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the shooting, which claimed 10 lives. Organizers handed out white roses to the victims’ families and the heroes who rushed to help. The school shooting was the largest in the U.S. since Columbine High School in Colorado six years earlier. Source: Star Tribune.

Brooklyn Park man pleads guilty in Mille Lacs fentanyl death

A Brooklyn Park man pleaded guilty to fentanyl trafficking that resulted in death, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick. According to court documents, on July 26, 2023, Allen Lee Goodwin, 50, sold a mixture of fentanyl and para-fluorofentanyl to a 38-year-old male victim who lived on the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation. Goodwin admitted he intentionally transferred the fentanyl and para-fluorofentanyl mixture to his victim, and that the man would not have died but for the use of the fentanyl substance that he sold him. Source: Mille Lacs Messenger.

Letter to the Editor: DOGE clearly doesn't understand treaty obligations

The following is a letter to the editor submitted by a reader and does not reflect the views of the Pioneer. The recent intent of DOGE to terminate the lease for the current building occupied by the Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is an example of DOGE not understanding the history of the treaty obligations between the U.S. Government and the Sovereign Tribal Nations. The federal government has a treaty obligation to the tribes to provide health care through the IHS. The BIA provides law enforcement and judiciary support, road maintenance, forestry management assistance and other support in support of federal government treaty obligations. The area office located in Bemidji was established to provide inherent governmental service to the 36 tribal governments located in the three states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is responsible for the equitable distribution of resources appropriated by Congress to the 36 tribes. They also provide technical assistance to the tribes. Many of these services must be carried out by the federal government or their representatives. Source: Bemidji Pioneer.

Military slices out web pages about WWII Native American code talkers to comply with Trump order to eradicate DEI

Military has long credited Indigenous code units for serving key roles in WWI and WWII. Judge blocks Trump’s executive order banning federal support for DEI programs. In order to comply with Donald Trump’s executive orders to eradicate signs of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the military has removed at least 10 webpages dedicated to the famed Native American “Code Talker” units that used indigenous languages to transmit secret messages during WWI and WWII." As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot told Axios, which first reported the changes. “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms." "In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly." The changes appeared scattershot, with some military pages about the those in the program leading to error messages and others maintaining content about the units, which included people from at least 15 different Native American nations and who served in key battles throughout the early 1900s. Some such sites appeared unchanged, but included a banner mentioning they had been reviewed for compliance with the Trump administration’s executive orders against diversity, which have ordered agencies to cease spending, organizing, and publicizing any DEI-related efforts. As one extant page notes, the military turned to members of the Navajo (Diné) because their unwritten language is one of “extreme complexity,” forming a code the Japanese never broke in WWII. Members of at least 15 different Native American nations served in the U.S. military during WWI and WWII, using their native languages to transmit secret messages across the frontlines (AP). “Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training,” according to the Navy. “It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest.” Source: Independent.com.

Airman charged in killing of Native American woman who went missing 7 months ago

A 24-year-old airman has been charged with killing a Native American woman who went missing in South Dakota about seven months ago. Quinterius Chappelle, 24, made his first court appearance Monday on one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Sahela Sangrait, 21. The court documents in the case are sealed, but authorities said Sangrait was killed in August on the Ellsworth Air Force Base in western South Dakota, where Chappelle was stationed as an active-duty airman. Chappelle is being prosecuted in federal court, and court records show he is being represented by the federal defender’s office. Sangrait was Native American, according to the poster. There are 59 cases of missing Native Americans in South Dakota and more than half of them are women, according to the attorney general’s missing persons database. Federal and state task forces were created to investigate cases of missing and murdered indigenous people across the country. Source: Associate Press.