Scott Williams swilliams@wolfrivermedia.com
The Menominee Indian Tribe filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the federal government over a drug raid on the tribe’s reservation north of Shawano.
Federal drug agents said they uncovered a large marijuana crop in the Oct. 23 raid, but tribe officials maintain that they were growing industrial hemp, a different plant with legal product applications and typically no psychoactive effects.
The civil suit filed Wednesday in Green Bay federal court seeks a judge’s declaration that the Menominee tribe can legally grow industrial hemp as a possible new business venture for the impoverished Native American tribe.
While acknowledging that some of its crop could have been more potent than hemp, the tribe also seeks a declaration that the reservation is exempt from Wisconsin state laws covering the cannabis plant, which in different forms includes both hemp and marijuana.
“The Menominee Indian Reservation is not subject to the jurisdiction or laws of the state of Wisconsin, including those that prohibit cannabis,” the suit states.
Named as co-defendants in the case are the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Department of Justice.
A spokesman for the DEA in Chicago declined to comment on the lawsuit, and officials at the U.S. attorney’s office in Milwaukee could not be reached for comment. Both defendants will have an opportunity to file written responses before the case moves toward hearings and a possible trial.
In a statement announcing the suit, Menominee Tribal Chairman Gary Besaw said the federal government is trying to deprive tribes of the same rights extended to states, under 2014 farm legislation, to pursue industrial hemp as a new cash crop. Menominee officials are still reviewing other options in response to the raid that destroyed their crop, Besaw said.
“This is the first step in a longer process,” he said, adding that the suit is intended “to first make clear to the federal government that tribes must be treated fairly and equally.”
The dispute stems from a raid carried out the morning of Oct. 23 on a remote tribal location along County Road M on the Menominee reservation. A sign posted at the scene declared it “a permitted and experimental industrial hemp field operation.”
Federal agents, however, reported confiscating about 30,000 marijuana plants weighing several thousand pounds. A search warrant affidavit showed that agents had reported evidence of illegal possession, manufacture and distribution of marijuana in the tribe’s agricultural operation.
No arrests have been reported, although agents at the time reported that their investigation would continue.
While immediately denouncing the drug raid, tribal leaders had announced plans to seek relief in court. Much of the suit focuses on the federal government’s relaxed restrictions on industrial hemp as a way of providing material for such legal products as paper, textiles, detergents and building materials.
With states now allowed to develop hemp crops, the tribe argues that it should be treated as a state, too, and allowed to grow hemp without regard for whatever restrictions exist in Wisconsin state law.
The tribe is represented in the suit by Brendan Johnson, a Minneapolis-based attorney who previously served as a federal prosecutor in South Dakota and also as chairman of a federal panel on Native American issues.
In a prepared statement, Johnson expressed confidence that the tribe would prevail on the central issue of whether it should be permitted to grow industrial hemp.
“This is a straightforward legal issue,” he said.