In 2018 the Oglala Lakota Oyate bought fifty acres just off I-90 outside their Nation then legalized cannabis for all adults in 2020. According to the Lakota Times Oglala Lakota College has the equipment to test cannabis but so far the cost of constructing a lab in Pine Ridge has proved to be prohibitive.
A year ago Legacy Cannabis in Duluth was the first non-tribal retail shop to open and in February a Minneapolis building housing a Pizza Hut became one of more than a dozen non-tribal dispensaries operating in Minnesota. Customers packed into the Brooklyn Park location of RISE dispensaries on its first day of cannabis sales, one of the first privately owned facilities to open about two years after the Legislature fully legalized the herb.
Several Tribal Nations have signed compacts with Minnesota and lead retail cannabis growth where the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is becoming a billion dollar enterprise after completing construction of a 50,000-square-foot cultivation facility that dwarfs any non-tribal operations which are capped at 30,000 square feet. The White Earth Nation was the first of Minnesota’s eleven Nations to open an off-reservation dispensary and compacts include how Minnesota taxes Tribal Nations on the sale of cannabis products to a licensed wholesaler or dispensary off-reservation.
Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) said other states and tribal nations are looking to mirror its approach — including Virginia, Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut and California, where tribal cannabis is restricted to reservation lands. Waabigwan Mashkiki, translating to “flower medicine” in Ojibwe, can barely keep up with demand as it expands operations in Mahnomen and opens retail stores across the state. Now seven tribally owned stores have opened outside of tribal land. The compacts allow each tribe to operate up to eight. [Minnesota Star-Tribune]The closest dispensaries to the horrible red state of South Dakota are in Pipestone and Luverne, Minnesota.
