Pact gives 3 Minnesota tribes stronger voice on land ceded in 1854

DULUTH, Minn. (AP)- The Superior National Forest and three Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota have signed an agreement that gives the bands a stronger voice in managing natural resources on land that they ceded to the federal government nearly 170 years ago. The agreement protects the treaty rights of the Fond du Lac, Grand Portage and Bois Forte bands within the territory they gave up in 1854 in exchange for hunting, fishing and gathering rights. More than 3 million acres of the ceded territory, about half of it, fall inside the national forest, which covers a huge swath of northeastern Minnesota. The tribes have about 9,000 enrolled members combined. “These bands have been on this landscape from time immemorial, connected to the work of how we sustain these lands,” Tom Hall,…

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