A pilot is fighting to recover his 1946 Stinson 108-1 following an emergency landing over Red Lake Nation tribal territory in northern Minnesota last month. The incident has drawn attention to a decades-old tribal resolution the tribe says established a 20,000-foot minimum altitude over Red Lake lands and renewed questions about who controls the airspace above tribal territories.
Pilot Darrin Smedsmo was en route to Bemidji Regional Airport for flight training on Oct. 15 when his engine failed over Lower Red Lake at about 3,500 feet. Smedsmo was forced to glide toward Minnesota Highway 1 on the reservation’s western edge. He landed safely, uninjured, with the aircraft largely undamaged.
“I was over the lake by maybe half a mile, and when I looked up, my prop was stopped in front of me, and that told me one thing, catastrophic engine failure,” Smedsmo said in an MPR News interview.
Tribal Resolution Cited in Aircraft Seizure
Tribal police assisted Smedso at the landing site but impounded the aircraft, citing a violation of the tribe’s Resolution No. 59-78. The 1978 measure, adopted amid opposition to proposed low-altitude military training routes, prohibits “the flying of any airplanes over lands of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians at an altitude of less than 20,000 feet.”
In a public notice posted Oct. 16, the Tribal Council reiterated that the ban remains in effect and asked residents to report low-flying planes to tribal law enforcement.
In a Nov. 3 statement, the Red Lake Tribal Council said the landing occurred “without prior authorization or required coordination with Tribal authorities” and “created immediate safety, liability, and resource-protection concerns.”
The statement added that Red Lake welcomes “engagement with the FAA and governmental peers to clarify Tribal protocols for emergency landings and Tribal laws and resolutions governing overflight.”
Legal Questions Over Airspace Authority
Smedsmo contends the regulation conflicts with federal aviation law.
“If that were the case, it would have been marked on my VFR aeronautical chart,” he told Lakeland PBS. “There’s no airspace designated over Red Lake. The FAA has jurisdiction over all airspace, and that supersedes anybody’s resolution or whatever you call it.”
Federal law, under Title 49 U.S. Code §40103, grants the U.S. government “exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States” and recognizes a public right of transit through navigable airspace. Current VFR sectional charts show a published T-route above the reservation, but no other special use airspace or advisories are depicted. T-routes are typically confined between 1,200 feet above ground and 18,000 feet mean sea level.
Smedsmo’s scheduled tribal court hearing on Nov. 3 was canceled, and the tribe has not yet announced a new date. Red Lake Nation said the case remains under investigation. The pilot has retained counsel authorized to practice in tribal court and has indicated that, if unsuccessful there, he plans to petition federal court for the return of his aircraft.
The Red Lake Nation is the only closed reservation in Minnesota and exercises full jurisdiction over its lands and maintains its own courts and law enforcement. Local aviation groups, including the Minnesota Pilots Association, have advised members to use caution when flying near or over Red Lake.
This sounds like an open-and-shut case to me. Other municipalities have tried to restrict their airspace and failed. Plus there’s 91.3 which says a pilot may break any other rule in an emergency.
How pointless our government is that it allows this, they should have sent the FBI in to retrieve this poor man’s property and arrest the thrives in the “tribe”
Law enforcement would have done this if he landed in the gov funded “projects” and the locals tried to steal the plane, not seeing how a reservation is honestly any different than the projects.