When U.S. Representative Chip Cravaack held a town hall meeting in Grand Portage last fall, one of the things the new congressman did was to ask members of the crowd about their concerns. After taking several questions about the proposed non-ferrous mining on the Iron Range, Grand Portage Tribal Council member John Morrin asked Cravaack about the $20 million that was appropriated by Congress in 1999 but, as of today, has still not been distributed to the Minnesota Chippewa bands.
Cravaack said he didn’t know anything about the matter but would get back to Morrin within 24 hours, which he did. That question and Cravaack’s push seemed to have gotten the ball rolling again on the long dormant issue, and on February 13 the House Committee on Natural Resources approved a subcommittee hearing to assess the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Judgment Distribution Act of 2011.
The $20 million awarded in 1999 has been sitting in an Interior Department trust, and with interest, has grown to about $28 million.
Congress made this award after the six Minnesota Chippewa bands successfully argued that the Nelson Act of 1889 had violated earlier treaties, and that the government had lied to them and misappropriated money earned from timber sales and land sales, not distributing those sale proceeds to the tribes as promised.
Under terms of the Nelson Act, which was signed into federal law on January 14, 1889, the Anishinaabe people in Minnesota were to be centralized on the White Earth Indian reservation and tribal lands were to be split up into allotments for individual Indians. The U.S. government also took ownership of thousands of acres of tribal lands and many allotments designated for tribal members went instead to white people.
In the end each of the Chippewa bands got to keep a small portion of their reservation lands, while much of the confiscated land was logged off or was sold at below market value and the U.S. government gave few of the proceeds, which were to go to the Chippewa, to them.
Later, the Nelson Act was found to be illegal and found to break the terms of former treaties, but at the time it was signed into law, those original treaties were ignored.
After Congress awarded the $20 million settlement in 1999, the six tribes’ executive committee agreed to a six-way split of the money. Later, White Earth reservation, the largest of the bands by population with 52 percent of the state’s Chippewa on its rolls, said it deserved a bigger split of the money. White Earth lost over 850,000 acres of original reservation land because of the Nelson Act. The Leech Lake band also argued that the federal government took more of its land than anyone else, with 69 percent of resources acquired attributed to them. Therefore, Leech Lake tribal leaders argued, 69 percent of the funds should go to them.
And so the money sat, languishing in limbo until Morrin asked Cravaack to look into it.
Under terms of the agreement, the bill reflects the wishes of the 2009 Minnesota Chippewa Tribal resolution committee and distributes the funds by awarding $300 per member enrolled in each band, with any remainder of the money divided in an equal six-way split of the remaining settlement funds to the six recipient bands.
A subcommittee hearing to assess the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Judgment Fund Distribution Act of 2011 will be held following the February 20 recess and before the end of March. The hearing will take place in the subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs.
According to Cravaack, in order for the bill to move forward in the Natural Resources Committee markup process, it must first be heard in subcommittee.
Cravaack and Representative Colin Peterson introduced the bill (H.R. 1272) to Congress earlier this month.
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