Tribes are pushing back on Trump Organization plan to sell off treaty lands

Attorneys are gathering even more evidence that the Trump Organization committed crimes against humanity throughout Indian Country not only by slow-walking resources to reservations during a pandemic but by undercounting Indigenous populations during the 2020 Census. Donald Trump even killed the White House Tribal Nations Summit because he loathes Native Americans after lawsuits he lost in federal court over casinos. 

Project 2025 and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party want a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people.

“This is a frontal assault on tribal treaty rights and the exercise of those,” said Cris Stainbrook, Oglala Lakota and CEO of Indian Land Capital Company, which assists tribal nations in regaining land. “It is unacceptable and downright appalling that Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing to include a provision that limits Tribal involvement in decisions about public lands in the reconciliation bill,” said New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the Democratic ranking member on the committee in a statement to High Country News. For decades, tribal nations have advocated for the return of lands taken through government policies and outright seizure. Tribes might support legislation that would make it easier for them to regain ancestral lands, but not like this, Stainbrook said. [Public land sale a ‘frontal assault on tribal treaty rights’]

If there is any good news about this there are Indigenous Nations who can afford to buy much of the land in the public domain if it indeed goes up for sale. After a 23-year effort and $56 million about 47,000 acres in the Klamath Basin have been returned to the Yurok Tribe after studies showed how conservation goals are more effectively met when Indigenous peoples manage their own territories. 

There is at least a $billion in the fund for the Black Hills Claim just for instance so maybe tribes can buy some of their own land from the US Forest Service in occupied South Dakota.

Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership.

Heirs of Native individuals who held Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts that were mismanaged by the federal government must act before the end of June to file a claim and receive what they are owed. [$38 Million in Cobell Settlement Funds Are Still Available]

Above image was captured by AP/Wide World Photo in 1948 showing George Gillette, the tribal chairman of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota or Three Affiliated Tribes, weeping at the Garrison Dam Agreement signing as he was forced to sell 153,000 acres of their land to the federal government. Standing directly behind Gillette is Ben Reifel, who was then the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Superintendent on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Born into the Sicangu Oyate, Republican Reifel went on to win election to the US House of Representatives in South Dakota's First Congressional District when there were two in my home state.

Learn more from columnist, George Ochenski at the Daily Montanan.