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South Dakota is a small place, and the town of Flandreau is even smaller. About 2,400 people located 40 minutes\u2019 drive away from Sioux Falls, the state\u2019s largest city and de-facto cultural capital, Flandreau is the largest settlement on the\u00a0Flandreau Santee Sioux Reservation<\/a> \u2014 which at 2,356 acres of gently rolling plains near the Minnesota border, is the smallest Native tribal reservation in the state.\u00a0But on the morning of July 1 \u2014 the day of the grand opening of the\u00a0Native Nations Cannabis Dispensary<\/a>, the first legal medical cannabis dispensary in the state as well as South Dakota\u2019s first Native tribal cannabis business \u2014\u00a0Flandreau<\/a>\u00a0was possibly the most famousplacein the state. And as an example of what cannabis can do for Native tribes, Flandreau might have been the most important reservation in the country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Through the grand opening over the July 4 weekend, the tribe registered about 1,000 patients, according to Seth Pearman, the tribe\u2019s attorney general, all of whom were then free to shop at the dispensary. (More importantly: There was no repeat of 2015, when threats from law enforcement thwarted the tribe\u2019s first crack at the cannabis business).\u00a0<\/p>\n Elsewhere on the reservation, about 10,000 well-tended cannabis plants oozed terpenes in tribal grow houses, waiting for when harvest\u00a0can net<\/a>\u00a0the tribe as much as $1 million a month \u2014 or maybe more, if the tribe also becomes the first adult-use cannabis dispensary within driving distance of Sioux Falls, as well asmuch larger cities like Minneapolis, about three and a half hours away.<\/p>\n With Native Nations Cannabis, the Flandreau Santee Sioux were not the first tribe to enter the marijuana industry. Native tribal cannabis businesses are in operation in California and Nevada, and with marijuana legalization sweeping the East Coast and the South as well as the West, tribes in places like Long Island, New York are also pursuing commercial cannabis.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in a reversal of the federal model that thwarts other cannabis companies from becoming nationwide powerhouses, the Flandreau Santee Sioux are demonstrating how tribes can use U.S. federal law to create unprecedented economic opportunity for indigenous Americans \u2014 and skip the headaches that are thwarting other legacy operators in states shut out from legal cannabis. If all goes well, the Flandreau Santee will provide a model for Native tribal cannabis in other states to follow \u2014 and be the first in their states to seize a foothold in the billion-dollar U.S. marijuana industry. And as Congress inches closer towards presenting a federal legalization plan to President Joe Biden, cannabis may prove itself more valuable than tribal casinos \u2014 maybe, even, the best economic opportunity for indigenous Americans, ever.<\/p>\n \u201cI think [federal legalization] will include the tribes,\u201d predicted Pearman, who envisioned a future where Native tribal cannabis is available in every state, on and off of reservations \u2014 and at a price that can break the market.\u00a0<\/p>\n South Dakota became the first state in the U.S. to legalize medical and adult-use cannabis at the same time in November. Voters approved both\u00a0Measu<\/a>r<\/a>e 26,<\/a>\u00a0which legalized medical marijuana, as well as Constitutional\u00a0Amendment A<\/a>, which ended criminal penalties for limited amounts of cannabis for all adults, by comfortable margins. (The Flandreau Santee Sioux were invested in the outcome: The tribe donated $100,000 in favor of legalization, campaign contribution records\u00a0show<\/a>.) Shortly thereafter, South Dakota also became the first state to have its elected and law-enforcement officials stage a revolt to overturn the voters will and maintain deeply unpopular drug prohibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n With Republican Gov. Kristi Noem\u2019s political support (and with taxpayer-funded legal resources from the state), leading police officials sued to cancel Measure A.\u00a0A\u00a0<\/strong>lower court agreed and\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0the measure unconstitutional; an appeal to the state Supreme Court is still pending.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, though the state\u2019s medical-marijuana law went into effect on July 1, state health officials have said that medical cannabis recommendations won\u2019t be issued until the fall. And dispensaries where patients could legally access cannabis might not open until next summer.<\/p>\n But what happens in Sioux Falls doesn\u2019t matter too much in Flandreau, which is governed by a 1934 federal law that declares reservations \u201csovereign nations\u201d \u2014 with their own laws, police forces and courts.\u00a0<\/p>\n All 574 federally recognized tribes enjoy the same sovereign rights \u2014 but as the Flandreau Santee found in 2015, there can be\u00a0exceptions.<\/p>\n That year, the Flandreau Santee Sioux tribal council voted 5 to 1 to legalize marijuana on the reservation. Work began converting a 10,000-square foot building near the tribal casino into what was believed to be the \u201cfirst marijuana resort in Indian Country and the United States<\/a>\u201d\u2014 ahead of South Dakota, and well ahead of the federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAside from making money, this is about sovereignty,\u201d Kenny Weston, a council member, said at the time. \u201cWe have sovereignty, and we have to assert it. The goal for many tribes is to become self-sustaining. Revenue from the marijuana venture will help us to get closer to this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The tribe believed it was within its rights. On top of tribal sovereignty, the Flandreau Santee Sioux also had a 2014 letter from the federal Department of Justice. In what\u2019s known as the Wilkinson memo \u2014 similar in language and scope to the Cole memo, which says state-legal cannabis businesses aren\u2019t priorities for federal law enforcement \u2014 the DOJ said that legal cannabis operations on native reservations shouldn\u2019t attract trouble from federal law enforcement. Since the dispensary would be legal under tribal law, so would the Flandreau Santee Sioux\u2019s Native cannabis business.<\/p>\n Or not. Tribal leaders were summoned to Washington, D.C., where Justice Department officials said sales of cannabis to non-Native people \u2014 and the Flandreau Santee\u2019s source of seeds \u2014would pose problems.\u00a0Fearing a raid<\/a>, the tribe decided to cancel its plans. The tribe burned its entire cannabis supply in November 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, everything else \u2014 like the grow facilities \u2014 were simply mothballed, deactivated but carefully preserved for when the winds changed again. As soon as cannabis could be considered legal off of the reservation in South Dakota, the Flandreau Santee Sioux would return to the Native tribal cannabis industry.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s why Native Cannabis opened on July 1. South Dakota law enforcement must respect medical-cannabis patients throughout the state. Anyone with a qualifying condition can pay $50 to get a card at Native Cannabis, which also recognizes medical-marijuana recommendations from any other state. And as soon as Measure A wins its court challenge and adult-use cannabis is legal, the Flandreau Santee Sioux\u2019s tribal cannabis industry will welcome all adults 21 and over, Pearman said.<\/p>\n In this way, Native tribal cannabis is also demonstrating what may be the best model of equity for the rest of the country. Sold as a make-good for the demonstrably racist drug war, marijuana legalization hasn\u2019t uplifted the non-white communities hurt hardest by overpolicing and incarceration, since these same communities have the least access to capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n But tribes own and operate their own real-estate and run their own regulations. They don\u2019t need to beg for expensive startup capital just to pay a licensing fee. In other words, they\u2019re set up to start making money from legalization almost immediately \u2014 a huge advantage for rural tribes for whom casinos are not an option, who can be free from a \u201cwhite male monopoly back there pulling strings,\u201d said Joseph Dice, co-founder of Tribal Cannabis Consulting, who works with tribes in California and Nevada.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get a small tribe that has nothing, and you build this infrastructure, it opens up a lot of doors,\u201d said Dice, who offered the example of the Lovelock Pauite tribe in Nevada. A poor tribe with just over 600 members with 20 acres of reservation left, the tribe opened a dispensary \u2014 and \u201cwithin a year people had jobs,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about sustainability and self-determination,\u201d he added. \u201cYou\u2019re no longer relying on the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n The post How Native Tribal Cannabis Can Beat States To Legalization<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
South Dakota is a small place, and the town of Flandreau is even smaller. About 2,400 people located 40 minutes\u2019 drive away from Sioux Falls, the state\u2019s largest city and de-facto cultural capital, Flandreau is the largest settlement on the\u00a0Flandreau Santee Sioux Reservation \u2014 which at 2,356 acres of gentlyContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":48922,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[216,897,80,8751,11175,139,15701,1577,13043,2058],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48923,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48921\/revisions\/48923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Native](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/nativenationssouthdakota.jpg.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nFirst Nations First, Finally\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
False Start<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The Best Cannabis Equity<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: How Native Tribal Cannabis Can Beat States To Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"