Jon Magnuson: Tribes building their own traditional economies

With a priority of protecting the sanctity of natural resources on Treaty lands, American Indian peoples will recover and claim their rightful place as original custodians and defenders of our land, our air and water.

Here in a remote part of Northern Michigan, the heart of such a vision is emerging in a collaborative effort by five tribes to preserve what remains of the original “ecological footprint” of plants and pollinators. Tribal communities are working together to establish centers for environmental education, field training, and promotion of Native seed harvesting and butterfly/bee protection. Those efforts are intentionally framed by ceremony and Native traditional spiritual teachings.

The test is a real one. Harvesting of wild rice, processing of maple sugar, and the growing of ginseng hold extraordinary and untapped potential revenue for tribe-based economies. If such intentional investments can be sustained, they will certainly outlast and, with the selected promise of global markets, even one day possibly outcompete revenues from blackjack tables and slot machines.

Meanwhile, tribes like the Lummi in Northwest Washington State, the White Earth and Fond du Lac in Minnesota, Bad River in Wisconsin and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Michigan serve as examples where collective voices, fierce and visionary, are finding allies to confront some of the largest international companies in the world in order to protect threatened national resources. These same communities, along with Michigan’s Hannahville, Lac Vieux Desert, Bay Mills, and Sault tribes, are building tribal economies around renewable natural resources, protecting and preserving what is left of rare plants on their own tribal lands.