Marijuana growers hide on Indian tribal lands.

Posted: Monday, August 29, 2011 12:00 am


SEATTLE • In the backcountry of the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington state, a handful of law enforcement officers spent part of last summer searching for two things: marijuana and the people growing it.

Tribal police and officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration were acting on a tip about a vast marijuana plantation in the forested highlands of the sprawling reservation. Such tips often yielded abandoned fields of cannabis, but none of the culprits.

But the team hit pay dirt in August by uncovering a grow operation with 8,850 marijuana plants, as well as the suspected grower, an armed Mexican national in camouflage clothing who federal prosecutors say had been tending the plot for almost four months.

Tribal reservations, some with hundreds of square miles of rugged backcountry, have become the front line for law enforcement eradication of marijuana grow operations in Washington, says Rich Wiley, who heads the State Patrol's Narcotics Division. Growers are targeting the outskirts of Indian country for their marijuana farms, knowing tribal lands are sparsely populated and less policed, he said.

"The tribes are almost our first priority," Wiley said. "They have some very pristine and very remote areas with no roads or indication of humans. But (drug-trafficking) organizations can take advantage of that. They are preying on the tribes because they know the land is remote and suspect that there's some sort of legal cover there because of the jurisdictional issues."

The number of pot plants seized in Washington state has skyrocketed in the past decade, but the proliferation of marijuana growers on tribal lands has outpaced the statewide increase over the past five years.

In 2010, almost 82,000 marijuana plants were seized on Washington's tribal lands — nearly one-quarter of the 322,320 plants hauled in by law enforcement throughout the entire state.

The number of marijuana plants found on tribal lands last year was more than nine times the number seized six years ago, according to the State Patrol.

While some of that total could be attributed to stepped-up enforcement, Wiley said, the numbers don't paint the full picture because not all tribes report pot seizures to the State Patrol.

Harry Smiskin, tribal chairman of the Yakama Nation, is at Washington's epicenter for marijuana production. In the past five years, more than 500,000 pot plants have been found on the reservation — more than any other tribe in the state, according to State Patrol numbers.

In 2008, the high point for pot seized on the reservation, Yakama Tribal Police and a collaborative drug task force recovered more than 204,000 marijuana plants at more than two dozen grow sites, according to the State Patrol. The State Patrol could not say whether there were any arrests.

"With the size of our reservation, there currently isn't adequate manpower just to patrol it. I'd equate it with the U.S. Border Patrol problem," Smiskin said. "They have X amount of miles and only so many officers. We're in a similar situation."

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