University of Minnesota fields comments on plan to return Cloquet Forestry Center lands to Fond du Lac band

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.minnpost.com/greater-minnesota/2024/02/university-of-minnesota-fields-comments-on-plan-to-return-cloquet-forestry-center-lands-to-fond-du-lac-band/

Wayne Dupuis remembers a time when he was hunting with his father on the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation and came upon the University of Minnesota’s Forestry Center, which sits on reservation land.

Dupuis hesitated, not sure if the two could be there. “I was under 10-years-old and my dad (and I), we were hunting over here … and he said, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna go hunting in there,” he recalled. “They don’t allow us to but we’re gonna go hunting in there anyway because that’s our right. This is our reservation. This is our homeland.’”

Dupuis was one of several people who weighed in Tuesday at a listening session in Cloquet over the future of the land and the forestry center, which the university plans to return to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The hearing in the center’s auditorium drew nearly a hundred people who came from Duluth, the reservation and areas of Carlton County.

The university’s decision emerged out of conversations with the tribe, said Karen Diver, the school’s senior advisor to the president for Native American affairs.

Land back!

[OldBaldy1701E]

1. Hear hear! (n/t)