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Pilot lands on reservation and gets his plane seized [1]

['Gail Sherman']

Date: 2025-12-29  

A pilot made an emergency landing on a reservation highway, and the Red Lake Nation impounded his plane.

The pilot, taking a shortcut from Roseau to Bemidji, Minnesota, over the Red Lake Reservation, home of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, experienced engine failure and landed safely on a highway within the reservation. The Red Lake reservation comprises over 800,000 acres and is one of the largest reservations in Minnesota.

Activist and erstwhile vice-presidential candidate Winona LaDuke explains further to MinnPost, "Red Lake is a closed reservation. This means that none of us — even tribal members from other reservations — mess with Red Lake. In 1978, it legally closed the airspace over the reservation for good reason."

The "good reason" is that the United States Government has a history of dropping bombs over Red Lake. Operation Whoosh dropped fifty bombs, allegedly to create wallowing holes for moose. This was followed by Operation Deep Freeze, in which nuclear bomb fuses were tested for use in Russia by detonating 11,00 pound bombs, without nuclear material, over Red Lake.

When the Air Force wanted to set up low-altitude training flights over Red Lake, the tribal council had finally had enough, enacting a resolution "prohibiting the flying of any airplane over the lands of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians at an altitude of less than 20,000 feet." While they have no real way of enforcing this while planes are in the air, once they land, the tribal police can take action.

In a previous incident, a pilot landed on a frozen lake in the reservation to look for fish. LaDuke again explains, "His plane was seized by Red Lake because that's what a closed reservation means, even if you have some of the best walleye in the world. It's almost like watching dumb tourists try petting a buffalo at Yellowstone. No one is surprised by the results."

Nor should they be surprised this time.

Previously:

• On Navajo reservation, half a million dogs roam wild, sometimes eating people

• Internet goes dark at Navajo reservation

• 'Taika Waititi's New 'Reservation Dogs' Is A Cool Indigenous Riff On Tarantino'

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