On the heels of 11,778 acres being returned from the Chippewa National Forest to the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in June 2024, we should be grateful. And we are. We have taken time to celebrate the accomplishment, recognize the many people who came together to make it possible, and envision the potential of what we can do with all that land. The transfer happened after decades of effort by Leech Lake to reverse an illegal land seizure by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1940s.