welrp 20th anniversary report

7/31/2019 WELRP 20th Anniversary Report

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2Oth Anniversary Annual Report


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This report is dedicated to the memory of Richard LaGarde. He is pictured here is an APphoto snapped at the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in l972, during the Trail of Broken Treaties. LaGarde was reading the sports page he told us. The takeover of the BIAbuilding was a response to the frustration of Native Americans in the loss of land, treatment. LaGarde represented White Earth proudly, and in l991 came to work for the organizationas one of our rst community organizers. He initiated our litigation against desecration of burial mounds on Ottertail Lake. He was killed under mysterious circumstances in l997.

We remember his spirit in this report and We continue his work.

James RyanBurt & Flo SandokJames SchmittFrances Schneider LiauJoe SchrinerJoel SchwartzCurtis SelphDaniel & Joanne ShivelyLisa & Karl SimerBonita SindelirChristine Sleeter

M.K. SmithJulia SmolinskiPatricia SpringerRobyn StocktonPersis SuddethCarolyn SummersRonald SundmarkAllen & Cathy Tasman Fa

FounJohn & Kim TaylorJoann & Douglas ThomasCharlie & Mima TipperCharleen TouchetteWhite Earth ReservationTribal CouncilTom TurnerRichard Vanden HeuvelDoreen ViceconteEileen WampoleJames C. WashburnMary WatersLisa WatsonJael WeismanJanet WenningerKenneth & Jean WentworGary West, M.S.W., P.C.Carlton R. WilliamsAnn WillmsChristopher & Ann WillmRMF FoundationWinky FoundationFranklin & Jean WitteCharlene & William WooCharlene WoodcockHoward & Roslyn Zinn

Diane MarksPatricia McAllisterElizabeth McCambridgeWallace McCurdy, Jr.Barbara McMahanCol. Karen A. MeierCheryl MerrittWomen in Construction Co.LLCMichelle LeBeauMarian Moore

Ibrahim & B. Jane MuhawiEdward MunyakLaura MurraMichael Nimkoff Ruth Noble NielsenRichard PaperJohn PollackJohn & William PooleTerry PridgenJoseph QuirkLorayne & Richard RaddeScott RamageRonald RattnerAlan RauschJeff & Jeanne Ray-StevensEileen RicheyPaul RocheleauDobbie RoisenHelen Rudie

Ro & Kathleen GrignonRoberta GuthrieMaria Faust & Ted HaalandDavid HalsteadJeff & Lynn HarringtonAliya HarrisonLeona & Charles HeitschMary HelgesonJanet HellerAmy HildenMargaret Hinton

Mollie HobenJudith & Ronald HorsnellKatherine HoustonBarbara HuntDonald IrishGary & Meira ItzkowitzDeborah D. JacksonDonald & Mary JavurekDonald JavurekKathryn JohnsonBob & Joy JohnsonSally JohnsonSinsinawa Dominicans Justice& Peace PromoterSybil P. Carof & Toyoko Kam-etaniArlen & Yvonne KangasLaurie KatonJajame Ali KilandJajaime KilandWm. Douglas Kilbourn, Jr.Paul KivelCarl KohlsJan KruseSandra KubalRebecca KugelBetty LaDukeSteve & Hallie LarsenJerome P. LiefertMary Sue LobensteinLaura LyonsElizabeth Mac MillanKristin & Raymond MajkrzakRuth ManleyBrooke Manley

White Earth Land Recovery/Native Harvest 607 Main Avenue Callaway, Minnesota


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We are twenty years old! Thats pretty remarkable for a grass -roots organization. We are committed to determining our destiny,and exercise that right. In our history, we have purchased land,

transformed state policies, begun to recover our food and energysystems, and raised our children. We now have two generations of

some of our families working for this organization. We have battled genetic engineering, clear cutting, pesticide contamination and coal red power plants. We have done it allwith very little money- but with sheer determination, commitment and a great love for

our people. We are proud of our work, and incredibly thankful for your support.We are also hopeful for the future. We know what we have done, and we see the ecologi-cal, environmental, and economic realities which surround us- they reaf rm our vision.

We know that climate change is imminent, and are growing foods which will be the mostresilient in the future, creating energy and housing models which re ect the change in

times. We are committed to a way of life for our community based on reverence and re-spect for our akiing- our land, and our relatives. whether they have roots, wings, paws orhooves. We are committed to determining our destiny, and the quality of life, to which

we are entitled as Anishinaabeg people. And we are determined to create a model of whatcan be in terms of relocalizing food and energy systems, restoring our land and relations,and creating a vital civil society. This report is a celebration of where we are now, and

where we have come from. Thank you for joining us !

Miigwech Aapijii,

56521 (888) 274-8318 (218) 375-4602 www.welrp.org www.nativeharvest.com

Winona LaDuke and

recieving the Interna

Award in 2003

Native HarvestIn the l990s, we continued a struggle to secure a fair price for our wild rice. MargaretSmith and Winona LaDuke worked with other native people in what was Ikwe(woman) marketing to purchase wild rice for a fair price at Lakeside, competing with anumber of off reservation rice buyers. We worked to drive the price of rice at Lakesideup, and continue this work. At the same time, Mike Swan ( Wabizi) and Frank Bibeausued Anheuser Busch corporation for its misrepresentation of wild rice in packag -ing. The corporation sold a variety called Onamia wild rice, featuring two Ojibwepeople in canoes, on the label but was acually selling California wild rice. Wabizi and

Bibeaus case was settled out of court, and the state of Minnesota enacted a wild ricelabeling law. Native Harvest was formed as a part of the White Earth Land RecoveryProject. We are deeply interested in strengthening our food economy- both to eat thefood here, and to sell to national markets. Our Native Harvest facility provides wildrice, maple syrup , organic coffee, honey, and a variety of mixes and art for manycustomers regionally and nationally. We hope you will continue to buy the best inIndigenous foods from our people.

AwardsReebok Human Rights Award- Capitalized Project in l989,

Slow Food Award 2003,Global Green Award,

Great Strides Award, Jesse Smith Noyes Award, Blue Cross Blue Shield AwardIndian Health Services Award 2008

Grants Received 2008Peace Development Fund

Honor The EarthMinneapolis Foundation/Emma B. Howe Memorial Foundation

AEPOCHCottownwood

Chicago Community Fund/Lefort-Martin FundShakopee/Business Council

Winona and her son Gwe testify

at the Minnesota State Legislature

on the Pine Point Farm to SchoolProgram


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We began our work because we believe in justice. Most of our landswithin the reservation have been taken from ou r people illegally,causing us great hardship. Plied from us by land speculators, ourpeople who could not read or write English, found that their allot-ments as approved under the l887 Nels on Act had been illegallytaken by lumber companies and land speculators until we weremade paupers in our own land. Five generations of our people hadbeen born into poverty- the most dire of economic and social statis-tics. Most of our people refugees raised off reservation, becausethese losses. In the late l 970s,Clearwater County tried to secure landowned by ZayZah, though quit claim deed. This descendant, GeorgeAubid, Supreme War Chief of the East Lake Band of Anishinaabefought the county and won.Therefore the courts ruled ourland had been taken illegally,yet we found we were stilldenied a recourse. In the earlyl980s, we formed a grassrootsorganization- AnishinaabeAkiing which struggled torecover our land, ghtingCongress through the courts.

Until the passage of the contro-versial and unjust White Earth Land Settlement Act of l986, we fought asplaintiffs , allottees and heirs in two legal cases known as Manypenny and

Littlewolf . In both cases, our rights were denied. That is how the WhiteEarth Land Recovery Project came to be- we decided that we should de-termine our destiny . We have this great opportunity and responsibility andwe owe our determination to our ancestors. We began as a project focusedon the restoration of our traditional land base. We began with the proceedsof the Reebok Human Rights Award, given in l989 to our founder, Wino-na LaDuke for her work in advocating for the return of land. We remaincommitted. In the 20 years, we have been here, weve purchased backaround l400 acres of land, or had it donated to our project. We could domore, and invite your support for land acquisition. Let us tell you what wedo on this land. We protect our ancestors- we hold two traditional cemeteries, because we believe our ancestorsgraves should be protected. We oppose clearcutting, and preserve maple stands- insuring that we are harvestingmaple syrup from our lands. We grow food; today, we grow two three sisters gardens, and we work with garden-ers and farmers on the reservation to grow out more of our traditional corn varieties. And, we are able to do muchnew work with our headquarters- purchased in 2006, the former Callaway Elementary School. This facility is notonly home to our organization ( including Native Harvest our food producer), but is also home to the CommunityResource Alliance, which advocates for the rights of children, families and those impacted by HIV. We house theAnishinaabe Center- working on cultural restoration and diabetes prevention, a daycare facility where many of our children play while community members work, Honor the Earth, our national partner in environmental jus-tice, the Boys and Girls Club of Callaway, and nally- in 2009, NIIJII Broadcasting, our radio station.

Land Acquisitions for White Earth Land Recovery * Waubun House * Louis White Property

Chief Wabunoquod

Winnifred Jourdain-Bwaanikwe

Shakopee/Tides FoundationCitizens Programs CorporationJessie Smith Noyes Foundation

Otto Bremer FoundationSlow Food USA

West Central InitiativeSaint Paul Foundation/Two Feathers Endowment

Chace Granting Group/Philidelphia Yearly MeetingSheltering Arms

CERTSLaura Jane Musser FundOttertail Power Company

General Mills Champions For Healthy KidsSynod Of Lakes & Prairies-SDOP

National SDOPMazon

USDA CREESThreshold Foundation

NCR-SAREMii-Gii-Way Advisory Board of RTC & Casino

WE RTCGlobal Greengrants FundSolidago

Association for Enterprise OpportunityWinky Foundation

Hunger Solutions MNDiocese of CrookstonRegion 2 Arts Council

WE RTCShakopee Mdewankton

Corporate Commission of the MLBPresbyterian USA

Bush FoundationLannan FoundationNew Mexico Acequia Association

WK Kellog Foundation/Rural People Rural InitiativesBlue Cross Blue


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Mino Miijim- Our FoodsWe were challenged by our board to do something with our land early on. So began our maple syrupingoperations,our wild rice parching mill, and our farm and gardens. We wanted to not only recover our relation-ship to our maple trees- inin itag- but we wanted to il lustrate that our forests were more than board feet of

lumber. Our forests are alive, and we are aforest people. We continue our maple syrupharvest, with a heritage production- handharvested, horse drawn equipment and awood red evaporator.

We began restoration of a heritage varietyof int corn in 2000 and are now expand -ing to other ancient varieties of int corn,beans, squash, and melons which are higherin nutritional value than hybrids. They alsopresent the greatest potential for our foodsecurity in a time of climate change becausethey were cultivated prior to a petroleumeconomy and are not addicted to fertilizersas a result, and are also frost and drought

resistant, having been grown in a time prior to irri-gation. We are very pleased to work on this project

in our own community and in coordination with the North Dakota State University programs in 2008, have beenawarded a grant by the North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture, Research, and Education program. Overthe past years, weve put up over a dozen greenhouses in our villages, installed grow boxes, and, with supportfrom the White Earth Tribal Council, plowed hundreds of gardens.

In 2007, we launched the rst Ojibwe farm to school program in the PinePoint elementary school, and serve foods from our land and from localand organic sources l00 children, teachers, and elders. This project isone of the rst Indigenous farm to school programs in t he country, andis aimed at countering the devastating impact of an industrialized foodsystem on a people who already suffer from epidemic levels of diabetes.In 2008, we completed the White Earth Anishinaabe Food Economy study,which documented that our households and tribal programs (excludingthe tribal casino) expend over $ 8 million annually on food- some seveneighths of it which is imported from off the reservation stores and foodservice providers.

While we have a strong subsistence economy, we also have a great lossin our food economy, and we wish to work towards creating a local foodeconomy for our community- whether through our gardening and farm-ing programs in the community, or through the capitalizing of local foodproducers and value- added production.

2008 White Earth Land Recovery Sugar Bushing- Maple Syrup Camp

Pine Point Elementrary School kids picking BearIsland Flint Corn

(Beaulieu Township) * Heart Lake White Earth Village * Kimball - Round Lake Cemetary *

List of Donors for 2008Louis AbelJanis AlcornNancy J.P. AndersonAnn AndersonGary AnersonAlison AntounClaudia AvilaKatie BadeRichard & Deborah BancroftBettina BarrettVivian BarryCarole Ann BarthCoral & Gregory BastienSandra BeasleyThomas BedardElaine & Steven BeitelspacherStephen BentonDon & Helen BerheimVivian BerryDavid BilidesEvelyn BlackJoy BoardmanBill BoksenbaumLinda BonkRuth BrinDavid BrisbinBonnie RaittC/O Provident Financial Man-agementCommon Roots CafPaul CampbellRoald CannMs. Mimi CarlsonJim CarlstedtSybil Carof Philip & Nancy Cayford

Erica ChristErica ChristiansonPat CierniaSitting Bull CollegeSylvia ColtonMarcia ConwayPeter CookW. Scott Cramer

Dave CrawfordH.S. CrosbyMortimer CushmanDeborah Davis JacksoLuca Del NegroJudith DemerathMary-Carolyn DorfmAlan & Claire DowneTimothy & Janet DrayMonika & Roland DuJeff & Lynne Ekola HBruce & Liza EngChrista ErnstRobert FallBarbara FathJohn FitzpatrickRMF FoundationThe Saint Paul FoundLeslie FowlerRobert FrankeJohn & Janet FredellWendell FunkSusan FutrellJohn & Linda GambreFrieda GardnerJudith GavinAl GedicksRenee GetreuMark GieseLarry GinsbergAilene GlatterJerome P. GleichSherna GluckMary GmeinerKen & Nancy Goodhu

McWil

Kenneth Goodhue-McJohn T. OConnor TrusGrav

James GrayMargaret GreenKen & Jeannie GreenElizabeth Cox GregorJan Griesinger


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promoted new ones. We leveraged our opposition to the Big Stone II proposal of Ottertail Power Corpor( we are Ottertail Power customers) We continue to oppose this 500 megawatt plant, because it is unneedemeet any demand, and because the coal era should be over.RDO Offutt, the largest independent potato grower in our region, leases tens of thousands of acres tribal lands. There are a number of very dangerous pesticides associated with potato growing, and thbeen a good deal of aerial spraying, as well as concerns about shallow well contamination in the Pincommunity. To begin addressing this, we installed a drift catcher, which collects data on aerialing of chemicals used by industrial farmers growing monocrops such as soybeans and corn, anied pesticides in the Pine Point Community. We worked to develop community awareness acommunity meetings and with help from some partners like Pesticide Action Network, the Indigenovironmental Network and EAGLE, developed several different educational fact sheets on pesticides, tcate community people about their effects on the development of children and overall health of the

Niijii Broadcasting :The Airwaves of White EarthIn July of 2008, the Federal Communica-tions Corporation awarded our organiza-tion a license to o perate a community-basedradio station. We have joined with LeechLake, Fond du Lac, and Nett Lake bands

of Ojibwe in this process- Ojibwe willsoon be heard across Northern Minnesota.We will be able to have vital dialogue inour community and participate in a largervoice in the north and nationally. We hopeto begin later this year with streaming ra-dio on the internet, and develop techni-cal capacity for our radio station in 2010.

Our Relatives-NamewagWe now watch when the relatives come home. Our sturgeon are returning as our tribal biology departmencoordinates one of the most extensive sturgeon restoration projects on the continent- as tens of thousandthese sh return to our reservation annually. The WELRP was involved in bringing home our relatives. Today,the Sturgeon Clan of our community rejoices.

Anderson- Round Lake Farm * Naytauwash Property- Cemetary * Gene Hill- (Sugarbush) * Mulari- (Sugarbush) Mino Akiing - 715 Acres - Thorpe Property * Reardon - 79 Acres * Skov- (S

Mino- WaasamowinNatural Power

We began work on renewable energy in the last millennium which is to say that we received a Department of Commerce grant to assess wind energy potential for thereservation in l997. In 2003, we erected our rst wind

turbine-a 25 Kw Jacobs- Gaa Noodin Oke- Mino- Waas-amowin. We are clear that we need to move to renewableenergy and conservation. In this vein, we are now com-

pleting erection of our 75 kw Loland wind turbine- whichwill power our main of ces, as well as NIIJII Broadcasting, making it the only wind powered radio station inMinnesota.

With your support, we were also able to install solar heating panels on the homes of l0 tribal families in ourarea, and create a model, which has inspired broader p articipation in the renewable energy and the green econ-omy by tribes in our region. Our sensibilities told us that the 700 households on fuel assistance on the WhiteEarth Reservation were faced with extreme fuel poverty, and the solution was not just to secure funding to paytheir fuel bills, but to reduce those bills signi cantly instead .We were able to install a solar heating panel as well on the Red Lake Reservation in Ponemah, and which gath-ered great interest in that community , and in addition we have been requested to do a training for that reserva-tion as well in the summer of 2008 so they may undertake a similar program. We are proud of this work.

Environmental Justice:In the mid l990s, we opposed clearcutting on lands on ourreservation, not only in administrative processes, but inblockading a road through our property. In other words, alogger was trespassing on WELRP property to secure accessto a clearcut -we blocked his passage, To encourage the al-ternative, we hosted a set of inter-agency meetings on for-estry, issuing a report in l999 on Integrated Forestry Manage-ment. We secured Forest Stewardship Council certi cationfor our maple syruping operation and lands.

In 2000, we began our opposition to the genetic engineering

of wild rice. We hosted meetings and reached out to all of the Ojibwe reservations in the US and received letters and resolutions opposing genetic engineering of wild ricefrom l9 Ojibwe tribes in the US and Canadian reserves , the Assembly of First Nations and Treaty 6 territories.We met a number of times with the University of Minnesota, and sought to dissuade them from geneticaly engi-neering any test plots of wild rice .

Gwe standing in the support tower for the Loland Wind Turbine

Harvesting Wild Rice at the White Earth Reservation in 2008

We have both opposed environmentally destructive energy projects and

welrp 20th anniversary report

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