Forest center fate is subject of meeting

It’s been a year since the University of Minnesota made public its administration’s plans to likely give the 3,400-acre Cloquet Forestry Center to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Other than a presentation to the university’s Board of Regents by former U of M President Joan Gabel in February 2023, it’s been radio silence since then.

Until now.

On Monday, university officials announced they’re holding a public listening session 3-4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13 at the Cloquet Forestry Center auditorium. People don’t need to sign up prior to the event to have an opportunity to speak.

Owned by the University of Minnesota, CFC has been the primary research and education forest for the university since 1909. It is the oldest experimental forest under continuous operation by a university in the United States. From the beginning, the forestry center existed for research, but that research also benefited local wood industries, like the sawmills and paper mills in Cloquet. Over the past 110 years, there have been studies on tree growth, tree harvesting, regeneration, forest ecology, wildlife (ruffed grouse and woodcock in particular) and forest pathology. Many more studies are ongoing — some for decades — carried out by CFC staff or University of Minnesota students.

The forestry center is also entirely within the boundaries of the Fond du Lac Reservation of Lake Superior Chippewa, on land that was originally set aside by the federal government for the tribe as part of the La Pointe Treaty of 1889. Although the land was purchased by a local lumber company and transferred to the University of Minnesota, essentially the transaction was legal only because Congress and the state legislature had passed laws allowing non-Native entities to purchase reservation lands, working around treaties to procure lands.

That is the heart of the issue.

A Fond du Lac Band spokesperson sent the following statement last February:

“The Cloquet Forestry Center land was taken from the Band and return of the land will help to restore the Band’s homeland. The details about the university’s ongoing role, research management, public access and many other issues are under discussion and will need to be addressed.”

Initial information about the forestry center discussions indicated the university was considering three options for CFC: no changes, joint management or giving CFC lands to the Fond du Lac Band. But the first two options were not publicly debated.

Former University president Gabel pushed for a no-strings-attached transfer of land to the tribe in her presentation last year to her board. The packet for that finance meeting stated plainly that “the University wants to make it clear that this real estate transaction is a repatriation of land to its original caretakers.”

Former forestry center professors, elected officials and local forest industry representatives have expressed concern that research in a time of climate change would not continue if the land is transferred, long-term projects would be lost, and that data would not be made public because the tribe has no obligation to share data in the same way that a public university does.

Many local groups like the Boy Scouts use the forestry center, along with individuals who enjoy walking with or without dogs in what is now termed “forest bathing” in mental health circles.

FDL Reservation Business Committee Chairperson Kevin Dupuis did not respond to Pine Knot questions last year, but he did talk to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in April 2021. At the time, Dupuis told the newspaper the Band wanted the forestry center land back, to use as they desire. He said they want to use it for “natural reasons,” and not for research that was not historically shared or explained to the tribe.

It wouldn’t be the first land returned to a tribal nation in Minnesota or the region. Two and a half acres — Wisconsin Point and part of St. Francis Cemetery in Superior — were signed over to the Fond du Lac Band in August 2022. Elsewhere, nearly 18,000 acres of land within the Chippewa National Forest were returned to the Leech Lake Band last year. More than 28,000 acres of land sold under the Allotment Act was restored to the Bois Forte reservation in June 2022.

The difference between those larger transactions and the Cloquet Forestry Center proposal lies in the history of the research conducted over more than a century, which also kept the land from being further divided and developed.

Gabel, who stepped down as president in April 2023 to take a job of chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh, said informal discussions of the proposed transfer began shortly after she was introduced in 2019 to Karen Diver, the university’s senior advisor to the president for Native American affairs and also a Fond du Lac tribal chairwoman from 2007 to 2015.

Diver is among several U of M officials who will be present at the meeting Tuesday, along with Brian Buhr, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Science (which includes the CFC) and Joleen Hadrich, associate dean of the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station and Research and Outreach Centers.