Forestry land ownership change could benefit all

In 2018 I retired as the forest manager for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa after a 37-year career. I'm also an alumnus of the University of Minnesota, College of Forestry. I'm writing to weigh in on the proposed return of the Cloquet Forestry Center lands to the Fond du Lac Band.

I'll start out with a brief history of the land tenure on Fond du Lac so the reader can better understand the issues. The Fond du Lac Reservation was established with the signing of the 1854 Treaty, four years before Minnesota became the 32nd state in the United States. As part of the treaty, the tribe ceded all of northeast Minnesota to the federal government in exchange for annuity payments while reserving hunting, fishing and gathering rights. The treaty also established a 100,000-acre reservation - an area of land reserved exclusively for the Fond du Lac Band. The federal government was to protect the reservation in perpetuity.

Despite the protection promised in the treaty, Congress passed the Dawes Act in 1887, just 34 years after the signing of the 1854 treaty. The Dawes Act chipped away at the protections of the 1854 treaty. The land was surveyed and broken up into individual "allotments" and assigned to individuals in 40, 80, or 160-acre parcels. "Leftover" lands were then given to settlers for homesteading, reducing the original lands reserved for Fond du Lac by about two-thirds.

Two years later the Nelson Act of 1889 called for the removal of the Ojibwe to the White Earth reservation. That act ultimately failed to move most Fond du Lac Band members, but it did open the door to swindling the Band out of natural resources and land by timber and railroad barons.

In 1909, Cloquet lumber interests and the University of Minnesota went to Congress and the state legislature to deed 2,215 acres of "surplus land" within the Reservation boundaries to the University of Minnesota at $1.25 an acre paid to the Secretary of the Interior. This action - along with the Dawes Act and the Nelson Act - stripped the Band of resources that would help sustain them over the long term. In addition, the Dawes Act, Nelson Act and the transfer of land to the university all violated the protections of the 1854 treaty and serve as examples of a long list of America's broken promises, agreements and treaties.

By the 1950s, only 20,000 acres of the original 100,000-acre Fond du Lac Reservation remained in Fond du Lac's hands. Given this history, all lands within the boundaries of the Fond du Lac Reservation should be available for reacquisition by the Fond du Lac Band, including the Cloquet Forestry Center.

Now I'll speak as an alumnus of the university's College of Forestry. I spent the spring of 1977 at the Cloquet Forestry Center. It was the best part of my forestry education. As students we were given an opportunity to start connecting the dots our education had provided us up to that point. The experience provided a good format for collaboration with fellow students. Finally, we were all working in a real-world forest looking at real-world problems and utilizing our education to come up with practical solutions and land management techniques.

As a practicing forester, the research and continuing education provided by the Cloquet Forestry Center and its outreach programs have been very valuable to me, and the natural resource community. The long-term research is especially important. Long-term research is expensive and hard to maintain over time. Long-term research dovetails into the Anishinaabe tenant of managing resources for seven generations.

As a community member of retirement age, I enjoy recreating at the Cloquet Forestry Center. The ski trails and biking opportunities are a good match for my skill level, and the forests of large red and white pines are a beautiful setting.

Ideally, if the Fond du Lac Band acquires the Cloquet Forestry Center, the property would be managed with the university in a collaborative manner - continuing the education, long-term research and community use. Band resources could enhance education and research by incorporating traditional ecological knowledge and other Anishinaabe principles. The Cloquet Forestry Center uplands are primarily a pine native plant community. Expanding research and education into hardwood communities could enhance research and education. Fond du Lac has lands that represent a variety of hardwood plant communities, which the Band could make available for research and education.

The change in land ownership would right a wrong from over a century ago. It also could result in collaboration between the Fond du Lac Band and the University of Minnesota, enhancing research, education and community involvement.

Writer and local resident Steve Olson retired from his job as forest manager for the Fond du Lac Band in 2018, after a 37-year career in forestry. Contact him c/o [email protected].