"On June 24, 2010, the Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Mike Black, promulgated an Indian Affairs Directive entitled "Processing Discretionary Fee to Trust Applications" (Directive). This Directive may be found in the Indian Affairs Manual at Document Identification Number 52 IAM 12. The BIA, through this Directive, attempts to make more transparent the fee-to-trust application process and reduce the time it takes the Department of the Interior (DOI) to make a determination on the applications. The Directive enhances the procedures delineated in the Acquisition of Title to Land Held in Fee or Restricted Fee Status Handbook (Fee-to-Trust Handbook). In addition, the Directive places an onus on the applicant tribe to ensure its applications are completed within a specific timeframe or risk delisting from active consideration.

This new policy outlines procedures to acknowledge receipt of applications for fee-to-trust land acquisitions, creates time frames for collecting information to complete the applications in a timely manner, suggests time frames for administrative and legal challenges to decisions to accept land into trust, and implements reporting requirements for pending fee-to-trust cases.

The Secretary of the Interior has discretion in making a trust acquisition for an Indian tribe, and the Secretary's decision must be based on an evaluation of criteria set forth in 25 C.F.R. § 151 and other policies. This process commences with an application submitted by the tribe, which contains the formal request and other necessary information to make the determination. The Directive requires the BIA to send a formal, written acknowledgement of receipt to the applicant tribe within 10 days of receipt of the application. Prior to the Directive, the BIA did not mandate acknowledgement of receipt of the application within any time frame.

The Directive mandates review of all current and future applications to ensure completeness. The Fee-to-Trust Handbook requires the BIA staff, when an application is determined to be incomplete, to prepare a written notice to the applicant that: 1) states that the application is incomplete, 2) specifies the information necessary to make the application complete, and 3) requests that the applicant supply the omitted information. The Directive mandates that the applicant tribe respond with the requested information within 30 calendar days of the original notice; failure to adhere to this temporal mandate will result in the application being considered inactive. "

Get the Story:
Carl Artman: New Fee-to-Trust Timelines and Procedures (Godfrey and Kahn 7/20)

Relevant Documents:
Processing Discretionary Fee-to-Trust Applications (IAM June 24, 2010) | Processing Land-into-Trust Applications for Applications Not Related to Gaming (June 18, 2010) | Press Release: Salazar Policy on Land-into-Trust Sees Restoration of Tribal Lands as Key to Interior Strategy for Empowering Indian Tribes (July 1, 2010)

Related Stories:
Salazar memo cites 1900 pending land-into-trust applications (07/01)