Bank files motion showing harm done by reservation

By JOEL STOTTRUP
Princeton Union Eagle
Posted 2/14/03

U.S. District Court Judge James Rosenbaum had not yet made a decision Monday on whether to grant the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibweís request to dismiss the case that Mille Lacs County brought against the band a year ago.

But one new development in the case is the filing of a motion by the party intervening in the case on the side of the county, First National Bank of Milaca.

On Feb. 4, 2002, the county board sued to have federal court determine if the Indian bandís claim is correct that the band still has a 61,000-acre reservation in Mille Lacs that would encompass the cities of Onamia, Isle and Wahkon, and the townships of Kathio, South Harbor and Isle Harbor.

The county has spent nearly $800,000 so far to have attorneys argue that the 61,000-acre reservation was disestablished in 1855 and that only about 3,000 to 4,000 acres of it still exists.

The Indian band asked Rosenbaum during a hearing in the federal courthouse in St. Paul Jan. 24 to dismiss the countyís lawsuit for various reasons.

With a packed courtroom of about 100 spectators and another 15 to 20 in an auxiliary room to hear the proceedings, Rosenbaum listened to attorneys for the band, the county and the bank. He then said he would take what was given in oral and written arguments under advisement and then render a decision. He did not give a time frame for making the decision.

During the hearing Rosenbaum asked tough questions of all the attorneys, repeatedly asking the attorneys for the bank and the county, for example, what problem they could document that would require going to court over the Indian bandís reservation boundaries.

Last week Scott Knudson, lead attorney for First National Bank in Milaca, revealed a request he made to Rosenbaum as a follow up to the Jan. 24 hearing.

What Knudson, from the firm of Briggs and Morgan, filed on Tuesday, Feb. 4, was a request for the federal court to grant a hearing on an "expert report." The report, Knudson explained, would show that First National Bank is harmed by the existence of the reservation-boundary controversy and that the harm would continue if it is found the 61,000-acre reservation still exists.

Judge Rosenbaum suggested at the Jan. 24 hearing that First National Bank had not shown any foundation for the assertion that the bank was being harmed, Knudson said last week.

If Rosenbaum denies the Indian bandís request for dismissal of the lawsuit brought by the county and the bank as an intervenor, then all the attorneys must be ready for trial in June.