Casa Grande Dispatch
Last month a lawsuit over federal mismanagement of Indians’ land was finalized. The 17-year class-action suit, filed by Elouise Cobell of Browning, Mont., highlighted decades of sad incompetence by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in accounting for royalties from leases for Native Americans’ property.
Now the biggest result of the $3.4 billion settlement can be started — a $1.9 billion buyback program that will purchase lands from individual tribal members who are willing and turn over consolidated parcels to tribes.
Problems began with the 1887 Dawes Act when some tribal lands were split into 80- and 160-acre parcels. These were given to individuals. Through inheritance over the generations, there now are 92,000 tracts with 2.9 million fractional interests.
Giving the land to individuals to own sounds like a good concept. The problem is that, with fractionalization that occurred over the years, the parcels did not amount
to enough to utilize effectively. These lands were leased for agriculture and other purposes, but over the years that became next to impossible because the owners were dispersed around the country and the government was unable to keep contact with them.
Some land owned by members of the Gila River Indian Community was leased for farming, but the fractionalization caused problems there as well.
The fact that the lands were part of reservations and tribal members had common interests complicated the system. A better one is operation of industries by the tribes themselves, which is done effectively by Gila River, Ak-Chin and other tribes. That allows large, efficient operations that employ tribal members and produce profits that can be applied to tribal benefits including education, housing, health and others.
This is a better system than having 21,200 tracts with 100 or more owners — many have thousands of owners, according to the Interior Department. Of the 150 reservations affected, most are in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Ninety percent of the fractional lands available to purchase are in 40 locations.
Beyond the land purchases, $1.5 billion will be paid out to two classes of beneficiaries, in amounts of $1,000 each or $800 plus a share of the balance.
The Cobell settlement is a major achievement in a very bad situation. The land buyback is the best part of it.
