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.”
“[It said] there’s no pathway for me as a non-member to grow here on my land,” she emphasized. “It also said, if I wanted to find a pathway, I would have to give 100% of my business to a Band member.”
Therese and her business partners believe that they have gone through all the right procedures to build their cultivation plant. They argue that since the property is not tribally regulated land, they should be able to proceed with their business. They also argue that since they received their preliminary license before the Leech Lake Band signed their cannabis compact agreement with the state, the Band has no jurisdiction over what they can and cannot do with their business.
“We have been in contact with [Cass] County and [the] township as much as we could, and everyone we thought that we [would] require permission from and need anything from,” said Chris Konecne, T’s THC’s Chief Operating Officer. “We did try and reach out to the Leech Lake Reservation as well and we’ve been open with them, so we were just a little surprised to hear that they were taking such issue with our business.”
Haugen and her partners then went to the State’s Office of Cannabis Management to ask for possible solutions, but they were instead asked if they could move their business off of the reservation.
“I said, ‘Move?’ she recalled. “‘What do you mean, move? Like, you want me to take my building and move it?’”
Haugen says that if she wants to keep her business, she may have to go through federal court.
“I don’t want to take anything away from the reservation,” she added. “I just want to be able to grow cannabis on my private land.”
We reached out multiple times to Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe officials for comment but did not receive a response.
Leech Lake Band Says ‘No Available Pathway’ for Non-Member To Open Cannabis Cultivation Plant
