The Treaty of Washington in 1855 established the reservation for the Mille Lacs Indians and other Mississippi Chippewa bands. Later treaties ceded portions back to the U.S. government, and subsequent statutes reserved the land for exclusive Ojibwe occupancy -- only to open it again to non-Indian timber harvesting and settlement under the General Allotment Act. The result is a reservation where, as of the 2020 census, 60.6% of the 4,767 residents are white and 31.8% are Native American. This demographic reality, a product of allotment-era land sales, created the legal friction that culminated in the 2022 court ruling. The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota ruled in favor of the Mille Lacs Band in a boundary dispute with Mille Lacs County, affirming that the territory set aside in 1855 retains federal reservation status. For the Band, it was legal confirmation of what they had never stopped knowing.

The Mille Lacs Band's territory is far more dispersed than a single lakeside reservation suggests. The Band maintains ten formal communities and six informal ones, spread across central Minnesota from Vineland (Neyaashiing) and Isle (Chi-minising) on Mille Lacs Lake, to Hinckley (Gaa-zhiigwanaabikokaag) in Pine County, to the Twin Cities (Gichi-oodenaang). Three administrative districts organize this geography. District I, centered at Neyaashiing, covers the western reservation and houses the government center, the Nay-Ah-Shing schools, and Grand Casino Mille Lacs. District II encompasses the eastern reservation and the Sandy Lake Indian Reservation in Aitkin County, a separate land holding that surrounds Big Sandy Lake. District III, the Aazhoomog District, extends into Pine County, incorporating communities of the historical St. Croix Chippewa who have been associated with the Mille Lacs Band since the 1800s.

Self-governance here is not abstract. The Band operates its own schools -- Nay Ah Shing School at the Vineland campus, Pine Grove Academy at Lake Lena, and Minisinaakwaang Leadership Academy in East Lake. It runs the Ne-Ia-Shing health clinic system with facilities across its districts. Woodland National Bank, headquartered in Onamia, is Band-owned. The Circle of Health program provides supplementary health insurance to members. Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley anchor the Band's economic enterprises, supporting not just gaming revenue but a golf course, RV park, and concert hall. In the Twin Cities, where many Band members live, the Urban Area district provides TANF services and affordable rental housing through a cooperative agreement with the city of Minneapolis. Each community, from the lakeshore to the metro, maintains its own Ojibwe name -- a linguistic map laid over an English one.

Mille Lacs Lake is the gravitational center. Roughly 14 miles across, it is visible from altitude as a great oval of water in the rolling Minnesota landscape. The Rum River flows from its southern end, the same waterway along which the Ojibwe fought the Dakota at the Battle of Kathio around 1750, the conflict that established Ojibwe presence in this territory. The Minnesota Historical Society's Mille Lacs Indian Museum sits on the southwestern shore, preserving artifacts and seasonal dioramas of traditional Ojibwe life. The reservation's communities radiate outward from this lake like spokes from a hub, connected by highways, governance structures, and a shared identity that has survived every attempt at dissolution. The Band's statutes, its schools, its place names in the Ojibwe language -- all point back to Misi-zaaga'iganiing, the great lake, and the people who named it.