DNR Wrongly Confiscates Native Leeching Equipment, Settlement Reached

In early 2024, Anishinabe Legal Services (ALS) was contacted by an elder member of the White Earth Nation, Nick, because his fishing boat and homemade bait traps were confiscated by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (“DNR”).  The DNR wrongly claimed that the elder’s unregistered boat and traps were subject to confiscation because they were found beyond the boundaries of the White Earth Reservation. When ALS was contacted, the client was aggrieved about the practical and sentimental loss of the boat and traps, but he had also waited nearly six years to inquire about his legal prospects.

Undaunted, ALS staff attorney and Minnesota Justice Foundation (MJF) clerk, Liddy Patterson, began preliminary research, even though Nick had a highly unlikely claim because he had waited so long to seek help. They discovered that although the DNR has no jurisdiction to regulate hunting, gathering, and fishing within tribal boundaries, the rights of tribal members to fish, hunt and gather beyond reservation boundaries is – with some exceptions – protected. In 1999, the Supreme Court held that unless a treaty expressly revokes the hunting, fishing or gathering rights of a tribe on the lands it “ceded” to the U.S., those rights remain intact. With this research in hand, ALS and Nick made a modest claim asking that the DNR replace the value of the boat and traps (estimated at $5,400).

In the end, ALS settled with the DNR for more than five times the original amount requested. As part of the settlement, the DNR also agreed to equip and train DNR Conservation Officers in how to identify lands and waters abutting or connected to the White Earth Reservation upon which the rights to hunt, gather and fish were not given up in their treaties. Although this settlement is limited to the waters, and not the land, of the White Earth Band (i.e. no other tribes), ALS and Nick accepted it because it enables Nick to restart his fishing business, and it sets an important legal precedent governing “ceded” waters and lands that could benefit the members of other tribes in Minnesota and beyond.