Federal and local authorities raided the marijuana farm on the XL Rancheria in California on July 8, 2015. Photo by Bruce Brown / Facebook
Julian Brave NoiseCat, the Native Issues Fellow for The Huffington Post, believes tribes will have to sign over some of their rights to states in order to avoid punishment for entering the marijuana industry:
To avoid the raids and to legalize weed in line with how the 2014 guidelines will be interpreted by state and local authorities, indigenous nations will have to sign compacts and non-prosecution agreements with state and local governments. These compacts, the first of which was signed between the Suquamish Tribe and the state of Washington in September, will reel sovereign tribes in under the jurisdiction of state and local law enforcement, authorities and review boards long hostile to indigenous sovereignty. To set up shop, pot farms and dispensaries will likely be required to mirror state tax schemes and regulations, as is the case with the Suquamish tribe’s compact. This will eliminate any tax advantages for marijuana businesses operating on reservations, thus undermining structural competitive benefits that might have given native pot farmers an edge. And these compacts will force tribes to emulate pre-existing state and local governmental structures regulating marijuana, essentially depriving them of the opportunity to define their own governance models and policies related to the marijuana business. The more compacts tribes sign, the more they start to look like they are subjects of the states and the more hollow their sovereignty becomes. After centuries of attempts to “civilize” Native Americans by forcing them to cultivate the soil, it will be pot farms that bring the feds and the iron fist of their law onto native lands again.Get the Story:
Julian Brave NoiseCat: Native tribes want pot business, but financial gain may cost their sovereignty (The Guardian 10/9) Relevant Documents:
Department of Justice Policy Statement Regarding Marijuana Issues in Indian Country (October 2014)
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