Pubdate: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA) Copyright: 2014 Chico Enterprise-Record Contact: http://www.chicoer.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861 Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority Author: Juniper Rose, Eureka Times-Standard JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO ALLOWS TRIBES TO MAKE THEIR OWN RULES ON GROWING MARIJUANA A memo released last week by the Justice Department said it would allow marijuana to be grown and sold on Indian reservations. But local tribal leaders weren't interested in pursuing the option. Two tribes in the Oroville area, the Mooretown Rancheria and Tyme Maidu, said they had only recently heard of the announcement, and doubted the decision would make any difference. A call to the Enterprise Rancheria was not returned. The amount of land owned by tribes in Butte County is relatively small, and two include the Gold Country and Feather Falls casinos. "For us its a non-issue," said Jesse Brown, tribal administrator for the Tyme Maidu. "Most of our land is housing and a parking lot and casino. "This is not something we are looking into at all." For the Paskenta Bank of the Nomlaki, which runs Rolling Hills Casino in Corning, the response was similar. The topic was not something the tribe had talked about and "at of right now we have no interest," said Latisha Miller, tribe vice chairwoman. Further North in California, the Yurok and Hoopa tribes have larger reservations, and have been battling illegal marijuana grows on their sovereign lands for decades. They said the new rules aren't a benefit to tribes and could even be a potential obstacle. The Yurok Tribe has a zero-tolerance policy against marijuana, Chairman Thomas O'Rourke Sr. said. The Hoopa Tribe does not allow any marijuana to be grown or distributed on its land - regardless of medicinal purposes, Hoopa Valley Tribal Council Chairwoman Danielle Vigil-Masten said. It would take rewriting tribal ordinances, not a federal memo, to change that, the tribal leaders said. Neither tribe has any plans to rewrite its laws because of the memo. "The Hoopa Tribe does have an ordinance that stipulates that you can not grow marijuana on the reservation regardless of whether the federal government is not prohibiting it," Vigil-Masten said. "Our tribe is concerned about the ramification as far as the court system, water and the chemicals that (growers) use that have toxic effects on our land and also on animals." The Yurok Tribe has taken a hard line against marijuana production, eradicating grows on and near its reservation with the help of federal agencies last June in what was known as Operation Yurok. O'Rourke said whether or not the federal government aids the tribe, it will continue to enforce its ban through complete eradication of any grows on their tribal land "until we get that message out that it is not just an open grow place." "It is not just about pot, it is about much more than that," he said. "It is about environment, it is about resources, it is about water, it is about an ecosystem, it is about the health of our people." The memo is directed at providing guidance to U.S. attorneys' priorities for enforcement, carrying over from the Cole Memorandum, released in 2013, which listed eight priority areas when it comes to enforcement in districts. These items from the Cole Memorandum - preventing: distribution to minors, revenue going to criminal enterprises, diversion of marijuana to states where it is illegal, using state-authorized marijuana to hide other drug trafficking, violence in relation to growing and distributing marijuana, growing on public lands and growing or smoking on federal property - can be used as a gauge for when the federal government will still interfere on reservations. Other than that, the federal government will not step in on tribal lands unless it's requested to do so by a tribe, according to the memo. Enterprise-Record reporter Heather Hacking contributed to this article. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom