By Mordecai Specktor
Weed dispensary on the rez
A trip to Welch, Minnesota, is in my future. Island Peži, a cannabis dispensary operated by the Prairie Island Indian Community, opened in June. It’s now the dispensary closest to the Twin Cities metro area — according to Google Maps, it’s a 56-minute drive from my home in South Minneapolis.
I already can buy cannabis products locally with my medical cannabis prescription. I have sleep apnea, which qualifies me for the medical weed, which is administered by the Minnesota Department of Health’s Office of Medical Cannabis. However, Green Goods, the downtown Minneapolis dispensary that I patronize, is fairly expensive, and Island Peži has better prices.
(In February, my wife and I visited the Palm Springs area. We stayed in a Desert Hot Springs hotel and I found a cannabis dispensary just a few blocks away on Palm Drive. A sign in front offered 30 percent off for first-time customers; so a 1-gram indica vape and a bag of THC gummies came to just $30 — quite a bargain. I didn’t mention this shopping trip in my March 2024 column about our visit to the land of Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, a rez that includes downtown Palm Springs.)
As of July 1, 2022, Minnesota legalized hemp-derived, THC-infused edibles — gummies and beverages. Republican members of the Legislature were distracted when the THC gummies bill sailed through both bodies. When they realized what happened, that they had legalized micro dose cannabis, the GOPers, who ostensibly stand for personal freedom, responded with howls of protest and demanded a re-do. But Gov. Tim Walz signed the legislation and that was that. Hats off to DFL-dominated state government!
And now Minnesota is the 23rd state to legalize recreational cannabis for adults. As of Aug. 1, 2023, we can possess and grow weed. In 1969, during my hippie daze, I never imagined that the state of Minnesota would sanction individual possession of 2 pounds of weed (a week’s supply for Snoop Dogg).
It is expected that cannabis dispensaries will not be up and running until 2025. So Indian bands in Minnesota jumped into the breach, opening dispensaries at White Earth (Waabigwan Mashkiki, “Medicine Flower” in Ojibwe) and Red Lake (NativeCare).
Island Peži is an example of tribal sovereignty in action. If you’re going to be sovereign, you have to act sovereign, as they say. And the new weed shop will provide jobs and a new revenue stream for the Prairie Island band, which had endured some rough treatment from the colonizers over many generations.
Sulfide mining update
Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican who represents Minnesota’s Eight District in the U.S. House, was boasting in June about his efforts to promote copper-nickel mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The legislation Stauber introduced would undo the Biden administration’s ban on mining in the area, and allow Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Chile-based mining giant Antofagasta, to pursue a mining scheme near Birch Lake.
As I’ve noted in this column over the past 15 years or so, hard rock mining has been an environmental catastrophe across the American West, despoiling lakes, rivers and groundwater. Mining firms have gone bust and left local and state governments holding the bag for costly clean-up. In the watery areas of Minnesota’s Arrowhead region, copper-nickel mining pollution poses a threat to remaining stands of wild rice.
Stauber’s so-called Superior National Forest Restoration Act is an attempt to jumpstart the Twin Metals sulfide mining project. In late June, Stauber told the Star Tribune that his proposals don’t “automatically allow mining. It allows the process to continue. There’s been some misinformation and some confusion. I want to be very, very clear. There will be no mining in the Boundary Waters or in the buffer zone surrounding the Boundary Waters. That was decided in 1978 when the wilderness was incorporated.”
Stauber’s position was contradicted by Alex Falconer, director of the Boundary Waters Action Fund, who said, “Rep. Stauber has once again introduced legislation against the will of Minnesotans and his constituents of the 8th Congressional District. These two dangerous amendments to the Interior Appropriations bill would defund the mineral withdrawal and regrant leases to Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project so they can pursue their sulfide-ore copper mine on the shores of Birch Lake, which flows through the heart of the Boundary Waters.”
Falconer’s statement added: “These anti-Boundary Waters amendments are Rep. Stauber’s latest attack on the Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park at the behest of a foreign mining company that has no vested interest in the stewardship of our public lands.”
Falconer also noted that this is the “third legislative attack on the Boundary Waters in the past two months by Rep. Stauber.”
