Red Lake Nation

The Red Lake Nation holds about 840,000 acres of forest, bog and lakeshore in northern Minnesota, surrounding most of Upper and Lower Red Lake, the largest freshwater lake entirely within the state. Its people are Ojibwe, or Anishinaabe, and their name for the place, Miskwaagamiiwi-zaaga'iganing, means 'red-water lake.' Red Lake is often called the only fully closed reservation in the United States: its land was never broken up into allotments and is still held in common by the tribe.

Red Lake's leaders refused allotment in 1889, and the band declined to reorganize under the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, so an elected council governs alongside hereditary chiefs who advise for life. The Nation also holds a section of the remote Northwest Angle. After its walleye fishery collapsed, a seven-year joint restoration with the state and federal government revived it in 2006, and the band now runs its own fishery. Red Lake was the first tribe to issue its own vehicle license plates.

• Minnesota
  The Land of 10,000 Lakes, headwaters of the Mississippi located in
• The Northwest Angle
  The only part of the lower 48 north of the 49th parallel related
• Red Lake
  The largest lake entirely within Minnesota surrounds