BILLINGS, Mont. — Federal officials on Thursday doubled the number of American Indian communities involved in a $1.9 billion effort to consolidate tribal lands owned by multiple individuals.
Twenty-one Indian communities in 12 states will join the land buyback program by 2017, said Deputy Secretary of the Interior Mike Connor. That brings the number of locations in the program to 42.
“Right now the program is accelerating,” Connor said. “Our outreach efforts and coordination with tribal leaders and government is becoming more effective.”
The buyback program was a central piece of a $3.4 billion settlement in 2009 of a class-action lawsuit filed by Elouise Cobell of Browning who died in 2011. The lawsuit claimed Interior Department officials mismanaged trust money held by the government for hundreds of thousands of Indian landowners.
The 1887 Dawes Act split tribal lands into individual allotments that were inherited by multiple heirs with each passing generation. As a result, parcels of land on some reservations are owned by dozens, hundreds or even thousands of individual Indians. That can make property all but impossible to sell or develop.
The buyback program aims to buy land with “fractionated” interests and consolidate ownership of the parcels under tribes.
In the effort’s first year, $225 million was paid to individual Native Americans for restoring the equivalent of 375,000 acres to tribal governments, Connor said.
Tribal leaders earlier this year criticized the program for its slow pace during testimony before Congress. They also said they were being shut out of decisions on what land to buy.
Among those who testified was Fort Belknap Tribal President Mark Azure. He said Thursday that a cooperative agreement reached this summer between the Fort Belknap tribes and federal officials had eased some of his concerns.
But Azure said Fort Belknap leaders still have too little say over which parcels are chosen.
He added some landowners remain reluctant to participate in the federal program. They are “just not going to sell their interest” in fractionated land when the federal government is involved, Azure said.
“That’s where we as tribes hopefully provide answers to all of their questions,” he said. “They would lean more toward tribal government in bringing in answers that are going to make sense.”
Roughly 245,000 owners of fractionated land on 150 reservations are eligible to participate in the program.
