Turtle Mountain, often referred to as the Heart of the Turtle, has been an abundant and biodiverse region, drawing ancestors through the generations to hunt and gather food and medicines. This rich land and the bounty that grows from it have been a source of inspiration and sustainability for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, like many Indigenous people, have a long history of using native plants for a wide variety of medicinal and nutritional purposes. Before the colonization and industrialization of Indigenous lands, the people of Turtle Mountain grew, hunted, and gathered all the food and medicine they needed to sustain life for their tribe and families.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians believe that hemp is a valuable crop. Chippewa Harvest was created because the tribe has the knowledge, land base, and workforce to produce hemp to recreate their traditional sustainable agricultural infrastructure. Tribal communities have intimate and long-standing connections to the homelands that have been disrupted and historically severed through relocation, acculturation, and forced assimilation. Yet tribal communities have fought to maintain their connections to land, community, and culture throughout American history.
Chippewa Harvest currently grows approximately 400+ acres of agricultural hemp. With an intense attention to sustainable development and ecological health, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians’ Chippewa Harvest is on the forefront of recreating a model for a tribal agricultural economy that uses hemp for its grain, fiber, hurd, and cannabinoids to move into a future that provides economic growth for their people, restarts their agricultural systems, and produces quality products that protect their lands for generations.