Man declares his strip club a sovereign nation

BY TAMMY J. OSEID AND BOB SHAW
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS

No man is an island, but Albert LaFontaine says his strip club is.

The Ojibwe man bought a former pizza parlor in tiny Elko in early October, declared the land a sovereign Indian nation and said he'll ignore any government's attempt to close it.

"There ain't no way on God's Earth that they're going to stop me," said LaFontaine, of St. Paul.

It's not the first time LaFontaine has said that.

The 82-year-old man who in 1959 offered to sell a third of North Dakota to the Soviet Union has put forth a variety of schemes to build casinos on land that he's bought and declared sovereign.

As an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain band of Ojibwe in North Dakota, La Fontaine said he received a document that gives him land rights in place of a parcel on the band's reservation.

He said that -- plus a plethora of laws and treaties that he recites to anyone not quick enough to get a word in edgewise -- entitles him to make the Elko land his own reservation. Elko is south of the Twin Cities, just off Interstate 35.

"It's not up to him to declare it as a sovereign reservation," said Mark Anderson, an attorney with Jacobson, Buffalo, Schoessler & Magnuson, which represents many Midwestern Indian tribes.

The U.S. Interior Department can establish new reservations. But the process takes years, and a state's governor must agree with the plan, which has stymied a Hudson, Wis., dog track proposal for years. The federal government must also find that reservations serve the best interest of the tribe and not be detrimental to surrounding community, Anderson said.

And U.S. policy has not allowed reservations for individuals.

In the meantime, LaFontaine's strip club -- which boasts no name but was formerly known as Circus Circus -- is driving some locals loco.

"It is frustrating," said Andrea Poehler, city attorney of Elko. Managing the typical lawsuits surrounding strip clubs is easier, she said, than "dealing with LaFontaine, who is really coming out of left field."

Until about a year ago, the building that formerly housed Glenno's Pizza was innocuous as things get in Elko, population 472. Then Minneapolis resident Emad Abed began transforming it into what he calls a classy strip club, complete with cushy lounges and a catwalk.

The city shut Abed down on a building code violation.

In October, after LaFontaine bought it for $1 plus "considerations," notices appeared on the doors, saying the owner was immune to laws restricting liquor and gambling. It warned federal and state officials not to interfere. The doors opened Nov. 1.