White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP)

What happened

The White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) is a nonprofit in Callaway, Minnesota. Its founding page says it was established in 1989 as a grassroots response to the long-term effects of the White Earth Land Settlement Act of 1986. The page says that Act addressed legal claims over widespread land dispossession but did not fully restore land to Anishinaabe ownership. It says elders, organizers and local residents came together to recover lands within the White Earth Reservation. The staff page lists Maggie Rousu as Executive Director.

WELRP's stated mission is to facilitate the recovery of the original land base of the White Earth Indian Reservation while preserving and restoring traditional stewardship practices, language fluency, community development and cultural heritage. Its listed work includes a food sovereignty program, the Great Lakes Indigenous Farming Conference, Indigenous farm-to-school curricula, an Indigenous seed library, an energy justice effort, a Native Harvest store and a community radio station.

WELRP's site does not say how many acres it has recovered or who holds title. Its published Forms 990 are linked from its reports page.

ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer lists the project in Callaway, Minnesota, as a 501(c)(3). It shows the exemption as issued in November 2021 even though filings from earlier years exist, an unexplained oddity of the registry.

Good to know. The group publishes no figure for how much land it has recovered.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error