Therese Haugen, a woman who lives within the Leech Lake Reservation, has spent the last few years building her dream business: a cannabis cultivation plant.
"Let's go, let's build a business, let's build a brand," said Haugen. That was her reaction when it became legal to possess and/or cultivate cannabis in Minnesota back in 2023. Since then, she has spent over seven figures building her brand, called T's THC, along with a facility in Cass Lake where she planned to start cultivating and selling to cannabis retailers.
"It's a 10,800-square-foot building," she elaborated. "This is probably one of the largest micro-businesses that's going to happen just because most micro-businesses require a flower canopy of 5,000 square feet. We have that, plus we have an additional 5,000 [square feet] to do what we want with it."
In late December, however, Haugen received a letter from the Leech Land Band of Ojibwe Cannabis Regulatory Commission. It said that cannabis businesses within reservation boundaries may only be licensed by the state if the tribal government provides consent, and that the current version of the Leech Lake Regulatory Act does not have a licensing mechanism for non-Band members. Haugen was then told in the letter that "there is currently no available pathway—state or tribal—for a non-Band member to obtain the necessary authorization to operate a cannabis cultivation facility within the exterior boundaries of the Leech Lake Reservation."
Read more at Lakeland PBS
