[1] Around the end of the 18th century, prior to the advent of white traders in the area, the Ojibwe, an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who had been in what is now Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, moved out onto the Great Plains in pursuit of the bison and beaver for hunting and commercial trade.
[2][3] For more than a century, as there was no international boundary, the Chippewa moved freely between what would become Manitoba, Canada, and the United States including Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana.
[4] Running battles with the Dakota over territorial disputes, were finally settled in 1858 with the signing of the Sweet Corn Treaty which described the 11,000,000 acres of the Chippewa domain and provided for reparations.
White settlers, wanting to take advantage of the Homestead Act petitioned Congress to open up the Red River valley for agriculture and to make treaties with the native peoples.
[6] The 1869–1870 Red River Rebellion was a series of events that started when the Hudson's Bay Company transferred the North-Western Territory trapping franchise to Canada.
As a result, Louis Riel and his Métis followers seized Fort Garry on 2 November 1869, and attempted to establish a provisional government for the territory of Manitoba.
[7] As the fur trade and buffalo hunting diminished available resources, the landless Turtle Mountain Chippewas, though recognized by the Government, found it difficult to ward off starvation.
Little Shell III wanted to obtain a 30 square mile tract at Turtle Mountain, but when that proposal was rejected, he and his followers abandoned the meeting.
[2] The McCumber Agreement was reached on 22 October 1892, which granted two townships within the traditional area ceding all other lands the Chippewa might possess in North Dakota.
On 1 August 1953, the US Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 which called for the immediate termination of the Flathead, Klamath, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Turtle Mountain Chippewa, as well as all tribes in the states of California, New York, Florida, and Texas.
In 1954, at the Congressional hearings for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, tribal Chairman Patrick Gourneau and a delegation spoke in Washington, DC.
They testified that the group was not financially prepared, had high unemployment and poverty, suffered from low education levels, and said that termination would be devastating to the tribe.
[17] On November 22, 2011 , the Turtle Mountain Chippewa voters were unanimous in banning hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to exploit oil reserves; they were the first tribe to do so out of concern for adverse environmental effects of this practice.
As the fur trade dwindled, many of the bands from the Red, Rainy, Leech and Sandy Lakes areas who had settled near the Post, drifted back into Minnesota and North Dakota.
"[32] There is high unemployment and poverty rates within the tribes and according to U.S. News & World Report and Pew Research “more than 1 in 4 native people live in poverty[33] and labor force participation rate – which measures the share of adults either working or looking for a job – is 61.6 percent, the lowest for all race and ethnicity groups.”[34] Delvin Cree, a writer with The Tribal Independent, criticized such tribal lending in an opinion piece published on Indianz.com in February 2012, describing it as predatory lending.
[36] Chairperson Sherry Treppa of the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake testified before the US House Committee on Financial Services regarding tribal online small dollar lending programs becoming a vital part of many tribes’ economic development strategies, saying that they provided much-needed jobs and revenue.