"There are ninety nine things we agree on, and just one thing we disagree about."
So states Mike Canales, President of the Business Board of the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, referring to a meeting he had today with Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman regarding the number of marijuana plants the tribe can legally place on their sovereign lands.
Heads have been turning and phones have been ringing all weekend, as casual passers-by, cannabis farmers and concerned citizens attempted to discern what they were seeing on a two-acre parcel visible from US 101, just north of Ukiah.
Those in the know identified the pallets of soil, the circular fabric "pots" and the irrigation lines as a burgeoning cannabis growing operation. But what was to be a 200-plant project situated on tribal lands has now been curtailed to two contiguous "grows" situated on adjacent parcels- one consisting of 25 plants and one strategically containing 26 plants.
Why 26 plants? "Because the Sheriff told me this afternoon that if we grow one plant over the 25-plant-per-parcel limit, he would eradicate that plant," says Canales. And that, he continues, would initiate a chain of events that Canales states would violate rights of tribal sovereignty, something that Canales is ready to test in federal court.
