"The first of the second round of tribal consultations between the Department of the Interior (DOI), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Office of the Special Trustee (OST) and various tribes took place at the Mystic Lake Resort & Casino, hosted by the Mdewakatan Sioux Indian Community in Shakopee, Minnesota, on January 31, 2013. The consultation was attended by tribal representatives from the state of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. The DOI has already posted a press release about the meeting at their website. I attended the meeting as an observer and to see what the DOI's plan for implementation would entail.

The meeting is part of the Cobell Settlement's (Settlement) LBBP implementation and is scheduled to also occur in Seattle, WA and Rapid City, South Dakota in the upcoming weeks. The Minneapolis meeting was attended by tribes from the Midwest, Aberdeen, and the Rocky Mountain Regions.

Although the tribal consultations are meant to include tribal input into the implementation process, the BIA has been busy during the past year putting together teams comprised of departmental representatives. Actually, a joint implementation team has been established and it appears that a plan to create three processing centers in various locations along with a LBBP Land Titles & Records Office (LTRO) to manage all acquisitions under the program is under way."

Get the Story:
Jay Daniels: A Review of Land-Buy Consultation Meeting, Minneapolis (Indian Country Today 2/6)