A Cambridge business owner is leading the charge, helping other Indigenous people coast-to-coast tap into the cannabis industry. Rob Pero runs Wisconsin’s first independent, Indigenous-owned cannabis company, Canndigenous.
“These are medicines we’ve gathered for ourselves for centuries that we’ve used to heal ourselves, so this only makes sense that, being Native, that we would utilize a plant like cannabis or hemp to do the same thing,” he said.
Hemp cannabis is legal in Wisconsin. Hemp and marijuana are sister plants under the umbrella classification of cannabis. Hemp doesn’t have the psychoactive effect that marijuana has. “Cannabis is another emerging industry that has yet to be tapped for a lot of tribes,” Pero, who is Bad River and Oneida, said.
Wanting to see tribes trade with each other and build a sustainable economy, Pero also sees the challenges. “There’s nothing simple about tapping into cannabis,” he said. “There’s still a lot of stigma around cannabis specifically on Indian land because of substance abuse and opioids and fentanyl. There’s a lot of historic trauma there as well.”
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