Opinion | Politics | Trust

Mark Trahant: Critics take aim at BIA land-into-trust approvals

Monday, June 1, 2015

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1935 for approval of the first constitution under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Photo from History.Com

Reporting for Indian Country Today, Mark Trahant looks into the political effects of a study about the approval rate of land-into-trust applications at the Bureau of Indian Affairs:

A couple of years ago Pepperdine Law Review published a student research piece that called the fee-to-trust process found in the Indian Reorganization Act “extreme rubber stamping,” citing a 100 percent approval rate by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Anyone who has ever dealt with the complicated maze of trust land knows two things about the article’s premise: First, it’s nonsense. And, second, would that it be true. The BIA has been notoriously slow to process lands into trust status. A decision usually takes years of back and forth documentation between a tribe and the BIA and formal denials are rare because instead the BIA simply returns an application for more information. It’s only during the past six years that the process has speeded up with more than 280,400 acres added as trust lands. The Obama Administration has set a goal of increasing Indian country’s land base by 500,000 acres before it leaves office in January 2017.
The Pepperdine article is an example of how an obscure, anti-Indian thesis influences public policy — even as the premise reflects a serious attack on tribal governments using errors of omission and faulty logic.
“Legally it doesn’t change a thing,” said Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Professor of Law & Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center at Michigan State University. “If this article were cited into court, it would get laughed out.” The legal arguments are about the merit of a fee-into-trust application because the law itself is clear. But the article does have political impact.
On May 14, 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs held a hearing on land into trust and the Republican majority staff memo alluded to the Pepperdine Law Review’s conclusion: “To the Committee’s knowledge, Interior has not declined any application to acquire trust land on the grounds that the tribal applicant was not under federal jurisdiction in 1934.”

Get the Story:
Mark Trahant: Would That It Be True: Bureau Of Indian Affairs’ Extreme Rubber Stamping For Land Into Trust Applications (Indian Country Today 5/27)

Committee Notice:
Oversight Hearing on "Inadequate Standards for Trust Land Acquisition in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934." (May 14, 2015)