fee land

McGirt and Rebuilding Tribal Nations Toolbox

Year

The McGirt decision has changed the legal landscape and created new opportunities for tribal nations starting with the Five Tribes in Eastern Oklahoma and potentially for tribal nations across Indian Country. It also has been the source of confusion, hyperbole, and alarm among some commentators.

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and University of Oklahoma Native Nations Center McGirt Colloquium Toolbox contains a series of briefing papers that explain the ramifications of McGirt in various areas important to tribes and clarify what is and what is not at issue. These briefing papers help affected tribes chart a pathway toward the effective exercise of post-McGirt tribal powers and productive collaboration with state governments. The briefing papers offer ideas and examples of what these processes and outcomes might look like. In particular, they consider at least eight areas through the lens of a tribal government’s responsibilities to its citizens, to other Indians, and to non-Indians on trust lands and fee lands within the external borders of recognized reservations.

We hope these papers will be shared, and the ideas disseminated, in ways that tribal governments and other partners identify as useful for creating dispassionate, helpful guidance to tribes and states in the post-McGirt era.

Resource Type
Citation

McGirt Colloquium Toolbox. 2021. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and University of Oklahoma Native Nations Center. https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/mcgirt-rebuilding-nations/home. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Retrieved on March 2, 2021.

Indigenous Land Management in the United States: Context, Cases, Lessons

Year

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is seeking ways to support First Nations’ economic development. Among its concerns are the status and management of First Nations’ lands. The Indian Act, bureaucratic processes, the capacities of First Nations themselves, and other factors currently limit the ability of First Nations to add lands to reserves or to use their lands more effectively in productive and self-determined economic activity.

As it confronts these issues, AFN has been interested in how Indigenous land-management issues are being addressed by Native nations in the United States. What is the status of Indigenous lands in the U.S.? Do Native nations in the U.S. face similar challenges to those facing First Nations? Are Native nations in the U.S. engaged in practices that might offer ideas or lessons for First Nations?

There are substantial historical, legal, and political differences between the situations of Native nations in Canada and the U.S. But there also are substantial similarities. In both countries, land has been a pivotal issue–in many ways the pivotal issue–in the history of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations. In both countries, despite massive land loss, Native nations retain remnant land bases with varying potential for economic development. In both countries, Native nations fiercely defend their remaining lands, seek to expand them, and are determined to exercise greater control over what happens on those lands.

This report addresses the status of Native lands in the U.S. It is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Overview of the U.S. Context,” reviews the history of Indigenous lands and provides an overview of current Indian land tenure and jurisdiction. Part 2, “Meeting the Land Management Challenge,” specifies the primary challenges facing Native nations in the U.S. as they attempt to manage their lands in ways that meet their own objectives and summarizes some of the innovative practices currently in use or being developed by American Indian nations. It identifies what we believe are key features of those practices. It also summarizes some of the relevant research on the relationship between control of Native lands and socioeconomic outcomes. Finally, it offers some recommendations based on the U.S. experience...

This report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Assembly of First Nations.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Cornell, Stephen and Miriam Jorgensen. "Indigenous Land Management in the United States: Context, Cases, Lessons." A Report to the Assembly of First Nations. Grogan|Cornell Consulting. Tucson, Arizona. December 2011. Report.

California Fee-to-Trust Consortium

Year

The loss of traditional land is a source of longstanding trauma for Native nations. It has far reaching consequences that began at the time of dispossession and persist today. Many tribes struggle to regain territory in order to support the basic needs of their citizens – housing, economic development, and essential services such as schools and health care. Frustrated by the federal government’s handling of applications to put land into trust, a group of California tribes began working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1998 to streamline the process by which tribes can secure landholdings that are protected by trust status. The California Fee-to-Trust Consortium has made it possible for the federal government to manage tribal trust applications in a timely and consistent way.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"California Fee-to-Trust Consortium." Honoring Nations: 2010 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2011. Report.

Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program

Year

Based on a memorandum of agreement between the Tribe and Skagit County, the Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program provides a framework for conducting permitting activities within the boundaries of the "checkerboarded" reservation and offers a forum for resolving potential conflicts. The process, which began in the mid-1980s, was the first of its kind in the United States and illustrates a promising alternative in land use conflict resolution by promoting between-government jurisdictional coordination. Since 1996, the tribal and county governments have jointly adopted a Comprehensive Land Use Plan and procedures to administer the plan, which together foster a mutually beneficial government-to-government relationship. Significantly, the model also has served to improve relationships between the Tribe and other contiguous local governments. To date, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has instituted more than a dozen separate agreements with federal, state, county, and municipal authorities in the areas of land use, public safety, public health, environmental protection, and utility regulation.

Resource Type
Citation

"Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program." Honoring Nations: 2000 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2001. Report.

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Yakama Nation Land Enterprise

Year

In an effort to consolidate, regulate, and control Indian land holdings, the financially self-sustaining Yakama Nation Land Enterprise has successfully acquired more than 90% of all the fee lands within the Nation’s closed area — lands which were previously highly "checker-boarded." The Enterprise’s land purchase program has allowed the Nation to expand industrial, business, and agricultural activities; tracts of land are used for housing, day care centers, ranger stations, longhouses, and for use by tribal education, foods, resource management, and cultural programs.

Resource Type
Citation

"Yakama Nation Land Enterprise." Honoring Nations: 2002 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2003. Report.

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. 

U.S. Land Rights for Indians?

Year

There is an argument within federal-Indian law literature that suggests Indians could have more effectively protected land under U.S. law if they owned land in fee simple rather than under trust. There is better protection for private property under the U.S. Constitution than can be had from treaties, aboriginal title, and federal trust protection.

This kind of argument is called a hypothetical and requires acceptance of certain assumptions before the argument’s logic can be understood. Hypotheticals are used in legal debates and in law school teaching to consider various outcomes of cases by hypothetically changing case facts. Hypotheticals explore alternative case situations, or anticipate future scenarios based on changing circumstances...

Resource Type
Citation

Champagne, Duane. "U.S. Land Rights for Indians?" Indian Country Today Media Network. April 27, 2014. Article. (https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/us-land-rights-for-indians/, accessed April 28, 2014)

Native American Lands and the Supreme Court

Producer
C-SPAN Video Library
Year

Tribal judge and legal scholar Angela Riley (Citizen Potawatomi) spoke in the U.S. Supreme Court chamber about the history of the Supreme Court and Native American lands. The lecture was one in a series hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and property rights‚ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg introduced Professor Riley...

People
Resource Type
Citation

Riley, Angela. "Native American Lands and the Supreme Court." Supreme Court Historical Society on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and property rights, Supreme Court Historical Society. Washington, DC. Nov 14, 2012. Presentation. (https://www.c-span.org/video/?309427-1/native-american-lands-supreme-court, accessed August 21, 2013)