Remanding tracts to tribes the right thing to do

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 are being returned to Tribal trust ownership.

So, a plan by the US Bureau of Reclamation to remand some 60,000 acres on the Wind River Reservation to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes is long overdue.

You know, the more you think about it, the more you think about this whole doctrine of discovery and what the federal government and attorneys have done to us – we've really got to stand up for ourselves, we have to protect what little we have. There should be no question that that land reverts back to the tribes. [Senior Wind River Conservation Associate Wes Martel]

The moves come as the Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Forest Service announce partnerships with Sweetwater County, Wyoming to soothe Republicans who feel put upon by federal agencies despite handouts like grazing for pennies a head.

Oklahoma’s creation must be taught alongside all the grim and dark history of U.S. tribal relations prior to 1907. How it is taught, of course, varies by the students’ age. But no child is too young to receive an honest, if difficult to hear, recitation of our shared history. Our public educators must also have the freedom to teach it. [Chuck Hoskin, Jr.]

On 18 April Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced protections for 4,200 acres in New Mexico for lands sacred to the Santa Ana and San Felipe Pueblos. In Arizona she signed historic agreements with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and pledged $14.5 million to the Navajo, Hopi and San Carlos Apache to electrify homes.

In Colorado, Senator John Hickenlooper took fire from Republicans opposed to the creation of the Dolores River National Monument.

Republicans in Arizona and Utah are challenging Pres. Biden's authority to limit grazing permits and uranium mining on Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. 

In most cases President Joe Biden should simply find the money, buy out Republican welfare ranchers and remand the ground to the Nations like the Klamath Tribes have been able to do and rewild the West.