RED LAKE, Minn. — Bruce Klajda drove from Bemidji to be among the first Minnesotans to buy recreational marijuana in Red Lake Tuesday, and he had big plans for the gummies he intended to buy: dice them up and put them in his cereal.
“I have severe osteoarthritis and nothing seems to be working,” he said, so he’s thrilled to be so close to the state’s first recreational marijuana dispensary.
A line of more than a hundred people, many cheering and dancing, queued up outside Red Lake Nation’s NativeCare more than an hour before it opened. It was a festive scene with food trucks, a jewelry peddler and the tribe’s radio station broadcasting live, with fireworks lit to mark the first sale.
The northern Minnesota reservation opened the first recreational marijuana dispensary in the state Tuesday, the first legal day to have or grow the plant.
Red Lake Nation, a federally recognized sovereign nation covering 1,260 square miles, is unique among tribes in Minnesota in that it’s owned and occupied entirely by its members. It decides who can visit the closed reservation and is governed by its own laws.
But the tribe and its citizens are happy to welcome others