Budding intertribal trade takes root in Minnesota with legalization of cannabis
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On a bright, windy Saturday morning in late June, a long line forms outside Island Peži, a new dispensary opened by Prairie Island Indian Community, home of the Bdewakantunwan Dakota.
A DJ spins popular weed anthems. Food trucks roll up selling coffee and frybread tacos.
Prairie Island Indian Community, located southeast of the Twin Cities, is the fourth tribal nation in Minnesota to open a dispensary in the past year — and the first to tap into demand for cannabis in the large Twin Cities market less than an hour away.
While trade between tribal nations goes back millennia, the legalization of cannabis in Minnesota is ushering in a new wave of intertribal trade.
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Nixon Malcolm manages White Earth Nation’s grow facility. He and his team are set up outside Prairie Island’s dispensary, sharing information about Waabigwan Mashkiki, White Earth Nation’s cannabis company.
Waabigwan Mashkiki means “flower medicine” in the Ojibwe language. Waabigwan — the shorthand name staff uses — is the prime supplier of cannabis flower to the new dispensary.
“At Island Peži, they went through two cycles, where anything I had cased and ready for sale on the shelf, they purchased our whole inventory,” said Malcolm.
The grand opening is the culmination of weeks of hard work for Malcolm and his staff. They stayed up nights to fill Prairie Island’s order and made the five-and-a-half-hour drive south five times.
Malcolm says Waabigwan is working quickly to meet demand.
“We just put a new piece of equipment online that will allow us to almost quadruple our jarring production and bagging production for all our pre-packaged cannabis,” said Malcolm.
In addition to supplying cannabis products to Prairie Island, White Earth sells cannabis to the dispensary operated by Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Plans are in the works for White Earth to supply cannabis products to a dispensary planned by the Lower Sioux Indian Community.
White Earth is also expanding its grow facility to meet demand, according to Zach Wilson is CEO of Waabigwan Mashkiki.
The White Earth grow facility has dedicated 10,000 square feet to its cannabis canopy and over 30,000 feet to its processing and packaging operation.
“We grow 300 plus pounds a month right now of Grade A flower. We've been doing that for the last year,” said Wilson. “We're in the middle of our expansion and that 300 is going to go over to 1,000 pounds monthly, very quickly.”
‘The punk rock move’
For the past year and a half Prairie Island has been busy creating the necessary laws and oversight to enter the cannabis business. Ben Halley is a co-founder of Honest Cannabis, a private company working with Prairie Island to build the business. Before working with Prairie Island, Halley worked in the cannabis industry with tribal nations in California.
Halley says the relationship between Prairie Island and White Earth is critical to the success of the budding trade in cannabis.
Without White Earth, Halley said, “No one else in Indian Country in Minnesota gets to take a step forward.”
Halley says he’s glad Prairie Island’s dispensary opening is profitable, “but tribes creating independent trade between themselves, free of the government, is the punk rock move here.”
Pinched between a railway, a nuclear power plant and the Mississippi River, which often overflows its banks, Prairie Island doesn’t have a lot of room to grow agricultural products. Even so, Prairie Island has already started growing cannabis and growing its own brand.
Blake Johnson is a Prairie Island tribal member and is the president of Prairie Island Cannabis Holdings, the company that owns the tribe’s dispensary.
“We are starting our own cultivation. We have a two-and-a-half acre outdoor grow that’s planted there already this year,” said Johnson.
Johnson says his community is also beginning construction on five indoor grow facilities, and that it’s possible Prairie Island may soon be producing enough cannabis to sell back to White Earth and other tribal nations.
“It’s exciting to work with other tribes and help one another,” said Johnson.
Intertribal trade in cannabis is likely to expand more in the coming year, as the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe continues construction on its grow facility.
Correction (July 15, 2024): An earlier version of this story mislabeled the Mississippi River. The story has been updated.