"Sunday officially marks the conclusion of President Obama’s first term in office – as well as the beginning of his second term. And with today’s announcement that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be stepping down soon, it is a good time to look back at some of the major developments in federal Indian policy over the past four years.

At the Department of the Interior, Secretary Salazar will be remembered as one of the most forceful allies of Indian Country to have occupied the position to date. Under his leadership, the Department of the Interior worked with the Department of Justice to settle the Cobell litigation and usher the Claims Settlement Act of 2010 to passage (though, this was not universally celebrated throughout Indian Country). The Claims Settlement Act also resolved four Indian water rights lawsuits, which will result in more than $1 billion of funding for the affected tribes.

In addition to these important items, there were numerous other developments at the Department of the Interior under Secretary Salazar in President Obama’s first term:

Indian Land Policy: DOI formulated and began to execute a coherent policy on Indian lands, which was based upon the (obvious) principles that tribes must have an adequate land-base to develop their economies, and that tribes and individual Indians should exercise control over their own lands. During the President’s first term, DOI completed more than 1,000 acquisitions of land into trust for Indian tribes – totaling nearly 200,000 acres. This involved key administrative reforms to improve the way that land-into-trust applications are processed. Also included in this effort, was an administrative process to review tribal trust applications in light of the Carcieri decision (under which some tribes acknowledged after the IRA’s 1934 enactment had land acquired in trust)."

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Retrospective on Federal Indian Policy during President Obama’s First Term (Turtle Talk 1/16)