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As Tribal Land Buy-Back Program Expands, CSKT Touts Success

Tribal council to discuss plan for buy-back land this week

By Justin Franz
Flathead Lake near Polson on Nov. 15, 2015. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council is slated to discuss next week what to do with land acquired through the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Land Buy-Back Program in 2014 and 2015.

The discussion comes on the heels of an announcement that the federal agency is expanding its buy-back program to 63 new locations across Indian Country. The expansion will extend the program through mid-2021.

The Flathead Indian Reservation was one of the first to benefit from the program, which stemmed from Elouise Cobell’s historic lawsuit against the federal government that sought to correct decades of mismanagement of tribal land. In 2014 and 2015, the federal government purchased $10.3 million worth of land on the Flathead Reservation, according to Carolee Wenderoth, head of the CSKT Tribal Lands Department.

According to the Interior Department, in 2012 there were more than 2.9 million fractional interests in Indian Country. Over the past century, land in Indian Country has become fractionated because the children of individual owners inherit undivided common ownership interests in the land. When those inheritors died, their children and family inherit the land and within a few generations dozens of people own a single piece of land. In one extreme instance, a single tract of land on South Dakota’s Crow Creek Reservation had more than 1,200 owners.

The division and sale of reservation land to individual tribal members was authorized under the Dawes Act of 1887.

The mismanagement of land and trust funds was at the center of Cobell’s class-action lawsuit against the federal government that was settled in 2009 for $3.4 billion; $1.4 billion of which went to the plaintiffs and the rest was set aside to repurchase and de-fracture land.

The program was recently expanded to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation east of the divide. On May 3, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell visited Browning to announce that the federal government was prepared to spend more than $100 million on the reservation over the next few years. The Blackfeet is one of the most fractionated reservations in all of America.

Wenderoth said the federal government worked with the tribe to purchase land in two waves, one in late 2014 and another in mid-2015. The government made purchase offers to more than 3,500 landowners over two years. In the end, the government purchased 6,900 equivalent acres of land. In some cases, the government was only able to make deals with some of the landowners, meaning the government only owns part of the land. Wenderoth said the tribe now owns 236 “true” acres of land that is spread across seven parcels of land. Some of those pieces of land are high-ticket parcels located along Flathead Lake.

Wenderoth said deciding what to do with the tribe’s newly acquired land is tentatively on the agenda for a council meeting on May 26. Other tribes have used the buy-back land to build housing or health clinics.

Despite spending more than $10 million to remedy the situation, Wenderoth said additional fractionated land parcels must be addressed on the Flathead Reservation, and she is optimistic that the buy-back program will be extended. During her visit to Browning, Jewell said any future extension of the program would be based on its success.

“At the end of the 10-year period (the program is in effect), if we can show that this has been successful it will make it a lot easier to get more money for it,” she said.

Wenderoth said another unexpected benefit of the program has been that more and more tribal members are sorting out their estates before they pass, so the land they own does not add to the problem.

“One of the most important elements of this program is that it opened up people’s eyes and encouraged people to plan their estates better,” she said. “It has been very beneficial to our reservation.”