RED LAKE, Minn. – Flags – both of the United States and of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa – flew at half-staff Tuesday as tribal members quietly mourned the victims of Monday’s shootings and wondered what had caused the violent outburst.
Playgrounds were empty and fewer cars and trucks were out. The tribe’s Seven Clans Casino, which rarely closes, was dark. An electronic sign outside repeated the message: “The Red Lake Nation sends heartfelt condolences to all family members of this tragic event. We are one in our sorrow and our loss.”
Mark Glynn, 38, a lifelong resident of the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, said he was getting fewer customers and deliveries at his auto repair shop in Redby, just east of Red Lake. Glynn and others worried that the shootings would forever tarnish the reputation of Red Lake, which has struggled with poverty, unemployment and gang and drug activity, problems that have hit other reservations and rural towns throughout Minnesota.
“This is a great community,” Glynn said. “I hope that doesn’t happen. We have crimes, we have drugs but it’s not like other places.”
Reports focusing solely on negative aspects of the reservation’s history had angered tribal members and people working to combat violence and other problems there.
“There are a lot of highly committed, energetic, talented and dedicated people here trying to make a difference,” said Steven Hirsh of the Center for Reducing Rural Violence in Bemidji, Minn. “Red Lake is not unique. It has the same problems other rural areas are having, though they may be more pronounced because it’s in a reservation setting.”
Reservations and rural counties both are suffering from high rates of poverty, job and population loss and unemployment, Hirsh said.
The center has been working with U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger and others at the reservation on a safe neighborhoods program. The goal is to develop strategies to reduce crime and “address ways to make kids healthier,” Hirsh said. “These are the kind of things that will reduce crime and delinquent behavior in the long run.”
Bill Blake, a veteran Minneapolis police officer who grew up on the reservation, said some of the problems come from outside. Gang members, for example, operate a drug pipeline that brings crack cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine from the Twin Cities to Red Lake. The reservation also has high rates of domestic violence and child abuse.
The shootings, however, do add a chapter to the sometimes-violent history of the isolated, independent reservation. Past leaders have clashed with federal authorities to maintain the band’s sovereignty and with opposing band members over how to use it.
In 1979, two teenage boys died in a riot that began with the removal of a tribal treasurer who had accused other leaders of misusing federal money. In 1986, a man who had accused the tribal courts of violating his and other defendants’ civil rights fatally shot the former tribal judge who had jailed him.
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Glynn, however, also knows Red Lake’s history. He was 13 years old on the May 1979 night when dissident band members stopped at his parents’ store in Redby, stocking up on ammunition storming the reservation’s law enforcement center in Red Lake. Five dissident members held five hostages at the center. An FBI agent ordered local officers to end their roadblock around the center, saying that they were facing life-threatening gunfire.
Conditions deteriorated after police left the reservation. The dissidents grabbed the police department’s weapons and broke into the place where the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs stored confiscated liquor. They also set fire to the law enforcement center. Widespread vandalism continued into the night, with several government buildings and the home of tribal chairman Roger Jourdain burning to the ground. Five men, including the husband of the ousted treasurer, were later sentenced to prison for assaulting federal officers and conspiracy.
Several years later, after another period of political unrest on the reservation, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson ordered the release of two tribal members who had been denied lawyers and bail before a tribal judge had jailed them. One of the jailed men, Gregory Good, a key figure in the dispute over accusations that former Chief Tribal Judge George Sumner and other Red Lake court officials had denied Indians their civil rights, fatally shot Sumner. Good was acquitted after pleading self-defense, after jurors heard that Sumner had beaten Good in a confrontation before the shooting.
“It’s obvious there were incredible animosities at that time on the reservation, and I think there still are,” Magnuson said Tuesday in an interview. “This is not a new thing. There have been really very substantial animosities on that reservation for a long time between various families and various groups.”
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