How a legal weed business ruined a Native American tribe

White investors told the Northern Paiute-Shoshone-Bannock people a cannabis farm could bring them money and jobs - but residents began to question the finances, and then the store and petrol station burned down

- Judith Matloff

IT WAS A SEPTEMBER NIGHT IN 2020 when the fire torched the Red Mountain Travel Plaza. Residents of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone nation watched as the only gas station and grocery store for miles around vanished amid towering orange flames and acrid smoke.

Without the convenience store, the approximately 250 residents would have to drive more than an hour for provisions. What's more, a safe stashed in the back room of the store that tribal officials said held nearly $19,000 in cash allegedly burned up. This was a portion of the profits from a cannabis farm down the road - 8 hectares of land that were the subject of much anger and anxiety on the reservation - and the tribe was counting on the money.

One tribal official alleged that law enforcement from outside the tribe suspected arson, but no one was charged. Many in the community suspected that someone had set fire to the gas station so they could make off with the cash. That was never proved. For most at Fort McDermitt, the damage was emblematic of something more troubling: a mismanaged venture that never realised its promise.

"We need to recover what we lost here," said Jerry Tom, an elder of the tribe, whose search for answers came to a head last year. "Nothing good has come of the cannabis business." The Northern Paiute-Shoshone-Bannock people from Fort McDermitt call themselves Atsakudokwa Tuviwa ga yu, or People of the Red Mountain. Their territory, which straddles Nevada and Oregon, lies among wide expanses of sage brush, with the nearest town, Winnemucca, 120km away. Route 95 from Reno passes several landmarks important to the tribe, including a peak that served as a lookout when fighting army cavalry in the 1860s. Bitterness still burns about the exploitation of lands once governed by Indigenous people.