Minnesota emergency landing leads to impoundment
Decades-old claim asserted by tribe
A pilot who made an emergency landing in northern Minnesota is asking the Red Lake Tribal Council to release his impounded aircraft.
Minnesota Pilots Association President Randy Corfman reported in a Facebook post on October 20 that the group is working with AOPA on behalf of an MPA member who made a successful emergency landing following an engine failure over the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The pilot was cited for violating a 1978 resolution by the Tribal Council that bars overflights of the reservation below 20,000 feet, a resolution that the Red Lake Nation News posted on October 16, advising members of the tribe to report low-flying aircraft to local law enforcement.
The southern border of the 1,260-square-mile reservation (which does not appear on aeronautical charts) is 18 nautical miles north of Bemidji Regional Airport, which, in a recent Facebook post in the Airplanes and Coffee group, was identified as the intended destination of the flight that launched from Roseau Municipal/Rudy Billberg Field, 86 nm north of Bemidji. A direct route between the two airports traverses the reservation, which encompasses a large portion of Upper Red Lake and all of the connected Lower Red Lake; both lakes appear in aeronautical charts just west of the Beaver military operations area. While the tribe has prohibited overflights of the reservation since 1978, it is not clear if that prohibition had ever been enforced prior to the recent emergency landing.
The Red Lake Nation website notes that the tribal government "has full sovereignty over the reservation, subject only to the federal government." The land is held in common, and the tribe, which "has the right to limit who can visit or live on the reservation," is exempt from a public law that would otherwise grant state government and court jurisdiction. "Laws are made by the Tribal Council and enforced by the Tribal Council and Federal Courts."
