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An investigation by High Country News and Grist has revealed the extent to which public institutions benefit from extractive activities on Tribal lands. As Western states entered the Union, they were granted parcels of land—often, land that had been taken from Tribes. The parcels were assigned based on gridlines superimposed on a map, with a certain section number or numbers within each township designated as state trust land, contributing to a "checkerboard" pattern of land ownership. Additional parcels were taken from Tribes through the allotment process, which transferred lands from Tribal to individual private ownership.
"There’s definitely a colonial imperative in the existence of those lands," said Miriam Jorgensen, research director at the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development. The investigation found that, as a result of these policies, across 79 Tribal reservations in 15 states, there are more than two million acres of state trust lands within Tribal reservation boundaries.
States are generally required to manage state trust lands in order to maximize revenue for beneficiaries, which are usually public schools and a small number of other state institutions. In many cases, states meet this requirement by leasing state trust lands for resource development such as oil and gas drilling or renewable energy production. The investigation found that at least five Tribal nations in at least four states are paying to lease more than 57,000 acres of state trust lands within their own reservation boundaries.
This system has put some Tribes in the position of having to lease back land within their own reservation boundaries to the benefit of institutions that serve primarily non-Indigenous residents, according to the investigation's analysis. Furthermore, management of state trust lands can be at odds with a Tribe's management of its reservation lands, preventing the Tribe from achieving its objectives. "Sometimes the placement of (trust lands) affects cultural practices, or precludes cultural practices from happening on those tracts," said Tony Incashola Jr., director of tribal resources for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. "We can’t do anything about it, because they have the right to manage their land."
Despite the legal obstacles, some states—including Montana and Washington—have made some efforts to execute land exchanges that would result in some state trust lands ultimately being returned to Tribes. However, these efforts apply only to surface acres and not to mineral resources below the surface. In the end, according to Incashola, "It’s not a want for ownership, it’s a want for protection of resources, for making us whole again to manage our forests again the way we want to manage them."
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It’s not that they’re mismanaging everything, but their management philosophy and scheme do not align with ours. Their tactics sometimes don’t align with ours, which in turn affects our capability of managing our land.”
