Divide and Conquer

While the federal government has been managing tribal lands since the 1820s, it didn't take over as trustee for individual Indians until 1887. That's when the U.S. Congress passed the General Allotment Act, aka the Dawes Act. That legislation, ostensibly an attempt to assimilate Native Americans, gave each member of a recognized tribe up to 160 acres of land, to be held in trust by the government. The government then sold off the surplus acreage. By the time the allotment period was halted in 1934, Washington had auctioned off roughly 90 million surplus acres — nearly two-thirds of Indian country — to non-Indians.

The remaining 56 million acres (10 million for individual Indians and 46 million for tribes) still make up one of the largest land trusts in the world. Oil leases and grazing rights, among other things, generated about $800 million in proceeds in fiscal 2006. The money went to 250 tribes and roughly 4 million individual Indians.

Not surprisingly, the Administration would like to get out of the Indian-trust business, handing that responsibility back to tribes. Some tribes, such as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe in Montana, already manage their leases.

But not all tribes want to see the government abandon its role as trustee. They point out that on the Great Plains, for instance, leases come mostly from grazing rights. Negotiating a single lease with dozens of lessors can get extremely complicated. Says John Dossett, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians: "The allotment holders rely on the Bureau of Indian Affairs to pull together a whole lot of allotments into a single grazing range."

What's more, some tribal members believe poorer tribes — which is to say most of them — do not currently have the resources or trust expertise to manage the leases. They believe the United States still has an obligation to look out for the interests of those tribes, many of which gave up their land at gunpoint. "Millions of acres of land were transferred to the U.S. for settlement, and in return the U.S. promised to provide health care, education, and economic development," says Michael Marchand, chairman of the Business Council of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville (Washington) Reservation. "This is what established the trust relationship. Now the U.S. wants to [renege] on these agreements." — J.G.

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