The White Earth Indian Reservation (or Gaa-waabaabiganikaag (lit. "Where there is white clay") in the Ojibwe language) is the home to the White Earth Band, located in northwestern Minnesota. It is the largest Indian reservation in that state by land area. The reservation includes all of Mahnomen County, plus parts of Becker and Clearwater counties in the northwest part of the state, along the Wild Rice and White Earth rivers. It is about 225 miles (362 km) from Minneapolis-St. Paul and roughly 65 miles (105 km) from Fargo-Moorhead.
Community members often prefer to identify as Anishinaabe (in their language) rather than Ojibwe or Chippewa, terms that came to be used by European settlers to refer to them. The reservation's land area is 1,093 sq mi (2,831 km²), and its population was 9,192 as of the 2000 census. The White Earth Indian Reservation is one of six bands that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, their governing body for major administrative needs. The Band issues its own reservation license plates to vehicles.
The White Earth Reservation was created on March 19, 1867, during a treaty signing in Washington, DC. Ten Chippewa Indian chiefs met with President Andrew Johnson at the White House to negotiate the treaty. The chiefs Wabanquot (White Cloud), a Gull Lake Mississippi Chippewa, and Fine Day, of the Removable Mille Lacs Indians, were among the first to move with their followers to White Earth in 1868.
The reservation originally covered 1,300 square miles (3,400 km²). Much of the community's land was improperly sold or seized by outside interests, including the U.S. federal government, in the late 19th century and early 20th century. According to the Dawes Act of 1887, the communal land was to be allotted to individual households recorded in tribal rolls, for cultivation in subsistence farming. Under the act, the remainder was declared surplus and available for sale to non-Native Americans. The Nelson Act of 1889 was a corollary law that enabled the land to be divided and sold to non-Natives. In the latter half of the 20th century, the federal government arranged for the transfer of state and county land to the reservation in compensation for other property that had been lost.
In 1989, Winona LaDuke formed the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which has slowly been pushing for the recovery of more land. The project claims that only 10% of the land within the reservation boundaries is owned by tribal members.
The White Earth Band operates the Shooting Star Casino and Hotel in Mahnomen, Minnesota. It is said to be the largest employer in the region.
Read more about White Earth Indian Reservation: History, Communities, Demographics, Economy, Topography, Climate
Famous quotes containing the words white, earth, indian and/or reservation:
“Through throats where many rivers meet, the curlews cry,
Under the conceiving moon, on the high chalk hill,
And there this night I walk in the white giant’s thigh
Where barrren as boulders women lie longing still
To labour and love though they lay down long ago.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, and again, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Music is so much a part of their daily lives that if an Indian visits another reservation one of the first questions asked on his return is: “What new songs did you learn?””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)