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Native American News Roundup March 26 - April 1, 2023

Demonstrators from the Batchewana First Nation demonstrate outside the mass presided over by Pope Francis, Thursday, July 28, 2022, in Quebec.
Demonstrators from the Batchewana First Nation demonstrate outside the mass presided over by Pope Francis, Thursday, July 28, 2022, in Quebec.

Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:

Vatican repudiates legal, ideological concept that drove colonization

The Vatican is rejecting the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery,” an ideological and legal concept rooted in 15th Century papal bulls (directives). Together, they have the Church’s blessing for the European conquest of the New World, the enslavement of “infidels,” and the denial of indigenous land rights.

Many Native Americans and legal analysts say the doctrine underpins U.S. law today. They cite an 1823 Supreme Court case, Johnson v. McIntosh, in which Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that discovery of the New World gave the discoverers a right of title to the land.

“The Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples,” reads the Vatican statement. “The Church is also aware that the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers…to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples…at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.”

Shawnee Lenape scholar and author Steven Newcomb has spent much of his career studying the Doctrine. He expressed some concern with the Vatican statement.

“It’s easy for them to quote the language from the Papal Bull of 1537 because it's favorable language, but they never quote any language from the earlier Papal document to explain what it is we're even complaining about,” he told VOA, referring to a decree by a later pope which said Indians should not be robbed of “liberty or the possession of their property.”

Read Vatican statement here:

Protesters block sale of alleged Native American skull

A North Carolina gallery stopped Saturday’s auction of what was listed as a 600-year-old skull of a Native North American after protests by members of a state-recognized tribe and allied demonstrators.

They cited the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which bans “all trafficking in Native American human remains for sale or profit unless they are excavated or exhumed with the full consent of the next of kin or a tribe or tribal community’s official governing body.”

An archived listing says the skull was purchased in the 1960s from a Montreal antiques gallery and that the 1990 law does not apply because the skull was found prior to 1981.

VOA reached out to Shannon O'Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who is chief executive and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs.

“It is not clear whether NAGPRA applies because we only have third-party information, some of it conflicting,” O’Loughlin said via email. “NAGPRA criminal trafficking provisions only apply if the Ancestor was taken from a U.S. ‘museum’ or federal agency after November 16, 1990, to traffic, sell or profit off of it.”

Read more:

A 1940 photograph of a signpost at Wounded Knee. Sacred Heart Catholic Church, in the background, burned down during the 1973 AIM takeover.
A 1940 photograph of a signpost at Wounded Knee. Sacred Heart Catholic Church, in the background, burned down during the 1973 AIM takeover.

Oglala Tribe to AIM: No more celebratory gunfire at Wounded Knee

The Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribal Council on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has banned the discharge of guns at Wounded Knee, the site of an 1890 massacre of several hundred Lakota men, women and children.

On February 27, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and their allies occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days, protesting tribal leadership and federal Indian policies. The anniversary of the start of the takeover has since been designated as Liberation Day.

AIM activists and supporters mark the date each year with celebrations at Wounded Knee that include firing their weapons (see clip below, courtesy of a tribe member who asked not to be named).

Descendants of massacre victims and survivors have long opposed the practice as profoundly disrespectful.

“My grandfather, he was a survivor of that day,” said Marlis Afraid of Hawk. “And those relatives who were massacred, they are still there. They didn’t cross over. And me, I am their voice.”

Adding insult to injury, she noted, “the people firing the guns don’t even have the decency to pick up their empty shells.”

Watch the Oglala Lakota tribal council vote here:

Tombstone of Amos Laframboise, a student at the Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pa. (Cecily Hillary/VOA)
Tombstone of Amos Laframboise, a student at the Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pa. (Cecily Hillary/VOA)

US Army to repatriate Carlisle student remains

The U.S. Army says it has approved the repatriation of the remains of a Carlisle Indian school student who died 144 years ago.

Amos Laframboise was among the first children sent to the Carlisle Indian School, the first of hundreds of schools designed to strip Native youth of their traditions and to remake them as “civilized” Americans.

He died just 20 days after arriving.

Since 2016, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota has fought to have the child’s remains sent home, citing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

Previously, the Army said that NAGPRA did not apply in this case “because the remains are not part of a collection.” The Army had also called for a signed affidavit from a lineal descendant of the child.

Tribal members say the army notified them this week that Laframboise will be disinterred in September.

Read more:

Detail from "Mašké" (friend), by Denver, Colorado-based Hunkpapa Lakota artist Danielle SeeWalker.
Detail from "Mašké" (friend), by Denver, Colorado-based Hunkpapa Lakota artist Danielle SeeWalker.

Lakota artist: ‘We’re still here’

Danielle SeeWalker, a Hunkpapa Lakota artist from the Standing Rock Reservation now living in Colorado, says she is working to give an accurate and insightful representation of contemporary Native American life. Her artwork is on exhibit in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. VOA’s Scott Stearns gives us a look.

See all News Updates of the Day

Long-sought court ruling restores Oregon tribe's hunting, fishing rights

Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians member Ramona Hudson looks up as her cousin Aurora Chulik-Ruff, 12, holds her 5-month-old brother, Bear Chulik-Moore, as they walk during a dance dedicated to missing and murdered Indigenous women on Nov. 16, 2024, in Lincoln City, Ore.
Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians member Ramona Hudson looks up as her cousin Aurora Chulik-Ruff, 12, holds her 5-month-old brother, Bear Chulik-Moore, as they walk during a dance dedicated to missing and murdered Indigenous women on Nov. 16, 2024, in Lincoln City, Ore.

Drumming made the floor vibrate and singing filled the conference room of the Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, as hundreds in tribal regalia danced in a circle.

For the last 47 years, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians have held an annual powwow to celebrate regaining federal recognition. This month’s event, however, was especially significant: It came just two weeks after a federal court lifted restrictions on the tribe's rights to hunt, fish and gather — restrictions tribal leaders had opposed for decades.

“We're back to the way we were before,” Siletz Chairman Delores Pigsley said. “It feels really good.”

The Siletz is a confederation of over two dozen bands and tribes whose traditional homelands spanned western Oregon, as well as parts of northern California and southwestern Washington state. The federal government in the 1850s forced them onto a reservation on the Oregon coast, where they were confederated together as a single, federally recognized tribe despite their different backgrounds and languages.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Congress revoked recognition of over 100 tribes, including the Siletz, under a policy known as “termination.” Affected tribes lost millions of acres of land as well as federal funding and services.

“The goal was to try and assimilate Native people, get them moved into cities,” said Matthew Campbell, deputy director of the Native American Rights Fund. “But also I think there was certainly a financial aspect to it. I think the United States was trying to see how it could limit its costs in terms of providing for tribal nations.”

Losing their lands and self-governance was painful, and the tribes fought for decades to regain federal recognition. In 1977, the Siletz became the second tribe to succeed, following the restoration of the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin in 1973.

But to get a fraction of its land back — roughly 1,457 hectares of the 445,000-hectare reservation established for the tribe in 1855 — the Siletz tribe had to agree to a federal court order that restricted their hunting, fishing and gathering rights. It was only one of two tribes in the country, along with Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, compelled to do so to regain tribal land.

The settlement limited where tribal members could fish, hunt and gather for ceremonial and subsistence purposes, and it imposed caps on how many salmon, elk and deer could be harvested in a year. It was devastating, tribal chair Pigsley recalled: The tribe was forced to buy salmon for ceremonies because it couldn’t provide for itself, and people were arrested for hunting and fishing violations.

“Giving up those rights was a terrible thing,” Pigsley, who has led the tribe for 36 years, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “It was unfair at the time, and we’ve lived with it all these years.”

Decades later, Oregon and the U.S. came to recognize that the agreement subjecting the tribe to state hunting and fishing rules was biased, and they agreed to join the tribe in recommending to the court that the restrictions be lifted.

“The Governor of Oregon and Oregon’s congressional representatives have since acknowledged that the 1980 Agreement and Consent Decree were a product of their times and represented a biased and distorted position on tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, and the Siletz Tribe’s ability and authority to manage and sustain wildlife populations it traditionally used for tribal ceremonial and subsistence purposes,” attorneys for the U.S., state and tribe wrote in a joint court filing.

Late last month, the tribe finally succeeded in having the court order vacated by a federal judge. And a separate agreement with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has given the tribe a greater role in regulating tribal hunting and fishing.

As Pigsley reflected on those who passed away before seeing the tribe regain its rights, she expressed hope about the next generation carrying on essential traditions.

“There’s a lot of youth out there that are learning tribal ways and culture,” she said. “It’s important today because we are trying to raise healthy families, meaning we need to get back to our natural foods.”

Among those celebrating and praying at the powwow was Tiffany Stuart, donning a basket cap her ancestors were known for weaving, and her 3-year-old daughter Kwestaani Chuski, whose name means “six butterflies” in the regional Athabaskan language from southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.

Given the restoration of rights, Stuart said, it was “very powerful for my kids to dance.”

“You dance for the people that can’t dance anymore,” she said.

Proposed tribal casino sparks tensions in California

FILE - Artist's rendering of the proposed Shiloh Casino & Resort released by the Koi Nation, Sept. 15, 2021. (Image courtesy of Koi Nation)
FILE - Artist's rendering of the proposed Shiloh Casino & Resort released by the Koi Nation, Sept. 15, 2021. (Image courtesy of Koi Nation)

The Koi Nation, a small Native American tribe with fewer than 100 members, is moving closer to building a $600 million Las Vegas-style casino resort in California’s Sonoma County, just an hour north of San Francisco.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has released its final environmental impact statement for the proposed Shiloh Resort and Casino, marking a key step in the tribe's application to place 27 hectares of land into federal trust.

The environmental report analyzed the project's potential impacts on air and water quality, wildlife, traffic, and other factors. While most effects were deemed "less than significant," some were classified as "potentially significant." The public now has 30 days to review the findings and submit comments before the bureau makes a final decision.

The Shiloh project faces stiff opposition from California lawmakers, Governor Gavin Newsom and neighboring tribes. Newsom argued in an August letter to the Department of the Interior that the land in question lies outside the Koi Nation’s historical homeland — a key requirement under federal law for gaming approval.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at the San Diego Zoo, Aug. 8, 2024, in San Diego. Newsom opposes the Koi Nation's plans to develop a casino resort in Sonoma County.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at the San Diego Zoo, Aug. 8, 2024, in San Diego. Newsom opposes the Koi Nation's plans to develop a casino resort in Sonoma County.

Competing tribes, most notably the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, also oppose the project. They launched a high-profile media campaign earlier this month with full-page ads in major newspapers accusing the Interior Department of undermining tribal sovereignty.

At the heart of the controversy is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which sets the rules for tribal gaming and includes guidelines about a tribe’s historical connection to land. The casino must be located on land the federal government holds in trust for the tribe. The act also prohibited gaming on lands acquired after October 17, 1988, unless certain conditions are met.

One such exception applies to tribes with restored federal recognition. In December 2023, the Biden administration announced an updated final rule that made it easier for tribes to acquire land in trust. The rule now permits gaming on lands placed into trust as part of restoring territory to a landless tribe that has regained federal recognition.

To qualify for this exception, a tribe must demonstrate both a historical and contemporary connection to the land.

"Man in Pomo dance costume," 1924 photo by Edward S. Curtis. Koi Naiton tribe members are descended from the Southeastern Pomo people living on the island village of Koi in Clear Lake, California.
"Man in Pomo dance costume," 1924 photo by Edward S. Curtis. Koi Naiton tribe members are descended from the Southeastern Pomo people living on the island village of Koi in Clear Lake, California.

For the Koi Nation, the fight is deeply personal. In 1916, the federal government recognized the tribe under its former name, the Lower Lake Rancheria, and allocated 56 hectares of land in neighboring Lake County which were largely unfarmable. By 1918, most tribal members had relocated to Sonoma County.

In 1956, the federal government sold off 40 hectares of the Lake County land and transferred the remaining 16 hectares to the sole tribal member still residing there.

Detail from 1884 map of Sonoma County, California.
Detail from 1884 map of Sonoma County, California.

The Interior Department did not officially terminate the tribe; through clerical errors, it simply forgot about them. Decades later, the government reaffirmed that relationship.

“The Lower Lake Rancheria have been officially overlooked for many years by the Bureau of Indian Affairs even though their government-to-government relationship with the United States was never terminated,” then-assistant Indian affairs secretary Kevin Gover stated in his December 29, 2000 finding. “I am pleased to correct this egregious oversight.”

The Koi purchased the Shiloh land for $12.3 million in 2021 and applied to the government to place the land into trust. The tribe says that trails their ancestors used in trade pass directly through the site.

“The Koi Nation has been in this region for thousands of years and is fully within its rights to pursue this project,” said Sam Singer, a spokesperson for the tribe.

Singer attributes much of the opposition to fear of competition. Currently, more than 60 tribes operate 66 casinos across California. The Graton Rancheria operates a resort and casino about 17 kilometers south of the Shiloh property and is currently undergoing a $1 billion expansion.

Native groups: Exit polls on Native voter preferences were flawed

FILE - Voter information is on display at a Phoenix Indian Center booth during an Indigenous Peoples' Day event in Phoenix, Arizona, Oct. 14, 2024.
FILE - Voter information is on display at a Phoenix Indian Center booth during an Indigenous Peoples' Day event in Phoenix, Arizona, Oct. 14, 2024.

In the days following the November 5 election, media outlets widely cited NBC exit polls indicating that 65% of Native American voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump.

While Native American advocacy groups acknowledge a trend of Native voters shifting toward the political right, they argued that the polling in this case was flawed and did not accurately represent their demographic.

NBC did not conduct the polling itself. It is one of four major news networks in the National Election Pool, or NEP, which relies on marketing research company Edison Research to question voters as they leave the polls.

Edison conducted phone, email and text message surveys of absentee and early voters in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio before Election Day and polled exiting voters at more than 300 polling stations across the U.S.

FILE - A woman walks near a polling station on the day of the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Raleigh, North Carolina, Nov. 5, 2024.
FILE - A woman walks near a polling station on the day of the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Raleigh, North Carolina, Nov. 5, 2024.

Once polling stations shut down on election night, Edison forwarded the voting data to NEP members so that they could analyze answers and project the winners.

NBC was the first to report exit polling data that included Native Americans. ABC News lumped Native Americans into the "all other races" category, as did CBS News and CNN.

The 65% figure prompted skepticism and confusion among some Native American observers. Native News Online, working with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and national survey firm Qualtrics, surveyed 865 Native voters and found that 51% of Native voters voted for Donald Trump.

In contrast, 60% of the nearly 5,000 Native Americans who participated in Illuminative's Indigenous Futures Survey in 2020 identified as liberal, and 51% said they were Democrats.

A sign marks the Turtle Mountain Reservation, home of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, in Belcourt, North Dakota. Native groups complain that national exit polls were not conducted on any tribal lands on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024.
A sign marks the Turtle Mountain Reservation, home of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, in Belcourt, North Dakota. Native groups complain that national exit polls were not conducted on any tribal lands on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024.

A closer look at the numbers

Stephanie Fryberg (Tulalip), who leads Northwestern University's Research for Indigenous Social Action and Equity collaborative, was puzzled by the NBC calculation.

In a November 8 editorial in Native News Online, she said that the Native voter sample size was too small and couldn't accurately reflect Native voter preferences nationwide. She pointed out that 80% of respondents were from urban and suburban areas, while less than 20% came from rural areas.

In a separate editorial on November 18, Native News Online editor Levi Rickert questioned whether the respondents were legitimate members of federally recognized tribes.

“Perhaps the most challenging aspect of research and data collection among Native Americans is self-identification,” he wrote. “For various reasons, many people claim Native American ancestry. Among Native Americans, a common joke is that the largest 'tribe' in Indian Country is the 'Wannabe' tribe.”

VOA reached out to Fryberg to ask how she arrived at the numbers.

"We wanted to better understand the sample of Native voters that major news organizations were using to draw broad conclusions about voting patterns in the 2024 election," she answered by email. "Reports from the NEP show that only about 1% of these respondents identified as Native American, equating to roughly 229 individuals … underscoring the urgent need for more comprehensive and inclusive sampling strategies that genuinely reflect Native voices in electoral data."

FILE - This combination photo shows Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, Aug. 15, 2024, in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, Aug. 16, 2024.
FILE - This combination photo shows Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, Aug. 15, 2024, in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, Aug. 16, 2024.

Edison Research Executive Vice President Rob Farbman agreed that the sample size was small, but he told VOA that it met the NEP's minimum criteria for reporting subgroups.

"This is a national survey meant to represent the country, but subgroups as small as Native Americans … are difficult to measure," he said. "It's certainly possible that our survey is underrepresenting people that live on reservations."

He also noted that results at the county level are still coming in.

"And the votes that we've been seeing so far are showing that Trump is doing way better among American Indians than last time,” Farbman said.

Allison Neswood, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said that exit polls should be viewed "with a lot of skepticism," and that the Edison poll "should really be discarded."

"Real hard conclusions will take a little bit more time," she said. "We're going to have to get more granular data, below the county level, to the precinct level."

Land Back movement gains ground, but full tribal control still out of reach

Black Elk Peak in South Dakota's Black Hills is sacred to the Lakota as the place where Oglala Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) had his first vision at age 9.
Black Elk Peak in South Dakota's Black Hills is sacred to the Lakota as the place where Oglala Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) had his first vision at age 9.

Land Back is a global, Indigenous-led movement advocating for the return of stolen lands.

While Indigenous communities have long engaged in that fight, “Land Back” as a meme began to gain popularity in 2019.

It now describes a decentralized international movement that emphasizes treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, climate justice and cultural revival.

“Land Back is like a prism with many facets to it,” said Alvin Warren, a former lieutenant governor of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico who has spent decades advocating for the restoration and protection of Indigenous lands.

“For me, within the paradigm of the United States legal system and land tenure system, it absolutely means the restoration of full title to Indigenous people of a particular piece of land that is part of their original homeland.”

And it doesn’t stop with the transfer of legal title.

“It’s about reviving the land-based aspects of our ways of life,” he said. “It could be agriculture, it could be subsistence hunting, it could be gathering things. It is about reuniting, reconnecting us with our homeland, about undoing the many layers of separation and disconnection from our homelands that has been the goal of colonization in this country and in other parts of the world.”

Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, gained national attention in July 2020 for blockading the road to Mount Rushmore ahead of a visit by then-President Donald Trump.

Shortly afterward, the NDN Collective activist launched a #LandBack campaign for “the reclamation of everything stolen from the original peoples.”

“When they [the federal government] took the land, they took everything from our people,” Tilsen said. “They took our governance structures. They took our culture. They took our language. They tried to destroy the familial structure of our people, our ability to make decisions over our food systems and our education systems.”

Tilsen believes the U.S. government should return all public lands, including the Black Hills, which the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty designated for the “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of Sioux Bands, today known as the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires).

That treaty was nullified without the tribe’s consent in the Indian Appropriations Bill of 1876 after a government and scientific expedition confirmed the presence of gold in the hills.

Is getting that land back a realistic goal?

James Swan, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe in South Dakota, doesn’t think so.

“It’s a pipe dream,” the founder of the grassroots Indigenous rights group United Urban Warrior Society, said. “But let’s say the U.S. government does return the Black Hills. Then what?”

Swan points out that tribes are not truly independent.

“They're part of the U.S. government,” he said. “A tribal chairman might be elected by the tribe, but he can't do anything without the tribal superintendent’s permission, and the superintendent works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

This 1911 Interior Department poster advertises Indian land for sale in 12 states. It featured a photo of prominent Yanktonai warrior Padani-Kokipa-Sni (Not Afraid of Pawnee) taken around 1900 by Smithsonian photographer DeLancey Walker Gill.
This 1911 Interior Department poster advertises Indian land for sale in 12 states. It featured a photo of prominent Yanktonai warrior Padani-Kokipa-Sni (Not Afraid of Pawnee) taken around 1900 by Smithsonian photographer DeLancey Walker Gill.

Fragmented land ownership

In 1887, the government allotted some treaty lands to Native American heads of household. The remaining land, over 36 million hectares, was sold to settlers or granted to newly formed states to generate funds to support public institutions such as schools, jails or hospitals. States were allowed to sell off some of their trust land “for no less than ten dollars an acre.”

Grist and High Country News recently reported that states today hold more than 809,000 hectares of surface and subsurface land on Indian reservations.

A public lands sign is posted at Virtue Flat off-highway vehicle area in Eastern Oregon.
A public lands sign is posted at Virtue Flat off-highway vehicle area in Eastern Oregon.

Federal oversight

The U.S. government legally owns 21 million hectares of reservation land that it holds in trust for the benefit of tribes and their members.

Federal rules limit what tribes can do with that trust land — they can’t sell, lease or transfer it without Interior Department approval and must follow strict environmental rules for many projects.

Within that trust land are restricted-fee lands that are owned by individual Native Americans or tribes but cannot be sold or transferred without federal approval and are exempt from state or local land-use regulations.

FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2020, photo, a sign marking the boundary of the Crow Indian Reservation stands near Hardin, Montana. The reservation shrank from 38 million acres in 1851 to its present size of 2.2 million acres.
FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2020, photo, a sign marking the boundary of the Crow Indian Reservation stands near Hardin, Montana. The reservation shrank from 38 million acres in 1851 to its present size of 2.2 million acres.

There are also fee-simple lands within those reservations that are owned outright by individuals or tribes.

“The fee-simple owner is the absolute total owner,” said Robert Miller, a law professor at Arizona State University and an expert in federal Indian law. “You have all the rights of ownership. Leave it to whoever you want. Sell it to whoever you want for a dollar or a million dollars.”

Previously, tribes were advised to purchase reservation land under a fee-simple title.

“But the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 and 1998 that if a tribe holds land under [a] fee-simple title, the state can impose annual taxes on it,” Miller said. “This has led tribes to request that the Interior Department take their fee-simple land into trust to avoid state interference.”

Pathways to land back

In December 2012, the Interior Department launched the Land Buy-Back Program, which purchased and restored to tribal trust more than 1.2 million hectares of land in 15 states over 10 years.

“The Land Buy-Back Program’s progress puts the power back in the hands of tribal communities to determine how their lands are used — from conservation to economic development projects,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit in Washington.

But some Native Americans are skeptical about the program.

“It is not about returning lost lands and putting them into trust for Tribes,” Todd Hall (Hidatsa) wrote in Buffalo’s Fire, an independent news platform run by the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance. “It is about dispossessing Individual Indians of their landownership rights and converting those rights to the collective ownership of the Tribal governments which were enacted by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.”

Today, tribes across the U.S. continue to buy fractional interests in trust or restricted land from willing sellers, often with help from conservancy groups and private landowners.

In September, the Western Rivers Conservancy transferred a 188-hectare former private cattle ranch to the Graton Rancheria in California for “permanent conservation and stewardship.”

Individuals also make private donations of land. In October 2018, Iowa citizen Rich Snyder voluntarily signed over land he owned in southern Colorado to the Ute Tribe.

In June, California announced it would return 1,133 hectares of ancestral land to the Shasta Indian Nation. Montana is currently considering the return of 11,800 hectares of trust land to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Reservation in exchange for federal public lands outside of the reservation.

A University of Montana study in 2023 identified 44 laws placing federal public lands into tribal trust. Many, however, upheld existing rights such as access, grazing, mining or water use. Others stipulate that the land remain “forever wild” or be used only for “traditional purposes” such as hunting or holding ceremonies.

There are also legal routes to getting land back, especially with the U.S. Supreme Court establishing a key precedent in the landmark McGirt v. Oklahoma case, which reaffirmed that a large area of eastern Oklahoma still belongs to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

“I predict there will be 30 to 50 years of litigation over every little issue if the state, feds and tribes don't cooperate,” Miller said.

Wisconsin agency issues permits for Enbridge Line 5 reroute around reservation

FILE - An above-ground section of Enbridge's Line 5 at the Mackinaw City, Michigan, pump station, Oct. 7, 2016.
FILE - An above-ground section of Enbridge's Line 5 at the Mackinaw City, Michigan, pump station, Oct. 7, 2016.

Enbridge's contentious plan to reroute an aging pipeline around a northern Wisconsin tribal reservation moved closer to reality Thursday after the company won its first permits from state regulators.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources officials announced they have issued construction permits for the Line 5 reroute around the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa's reservation. The energy company still needs discharge permits from the DNR and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The project has generated fierce opposition. The tribe wants the pipeline off its land, but tribal members and environmentalists maintain rerouting construction will damage the region's watershed and perpetuate the use of fossil fuels.

Permits issued with conditions

The DNR issued the construction permits with more than 200 conditions attached. The company must complete the project by November 14, 2027, hire DNR-approved environmental monitors and allow DNR employees to access the site during reasonable hours.

The company also must notify the agency within 24 hours of any permit violations or hazardous material spills affecting wetlands or waterways; can't discharge any drilling mud into wetlands, waterways or sensitive areas; keep spill response equipment at workspace entry and exit points; and monitor for the introduction and spread in invasive plant species.

Enbridge officials issued a statement praising the approval, calling it a "major step" toward construction that will keep reliable energy flowing to Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region.

Bad River tribal officials warned in their own statement Thursday that the project calls for blasting, drilling and digging trenches that would devastate area wetlands and streams and endanger the tribe's wild rice beds. The tribe noted that investigations identified water quality violations and three aquifer breaches related to the Line 3 pipeline's construction in northern Minnesota.

"I'm angry that the DNR has signed off on a half-baked plan that spells disaster for our homeland and our way of life," Bad River Chairman Robert Blanchard said in the statement. "We will continue sounding the alarm to prevent yet another Enbridge pipeline from endangering our watershed."

Tribe sues in 2019

Line 5 transports up to 23 million gallons (about 87 million liters) of oil and natural gas daily from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario. About 19 kilometers (12 miles) of the pipeline run across the Bad River reservation.

The tribe sued Enbridge in 2019 to force the company to remove the pipeline from the reservation, arguing that the 71-year-old line is prone to a catastrophic spill and that land easements allowing Enbridge to operate on the reservation expired in 2013.

Enbridge has proposed a 66-kilometer (41-mile) reroute around the reservation's southern border.

The company has only about two years to complete the project. U.S. District Judge William Conley last year ordered Enbridge to shut down the portion of pipeline crossing the reservation within three years and pay the tribe more than $5 million for trespassing. An Enbridge appeal is pending in a federal appellate court in Chicago.

Michigan's Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, filed a lawsuit in 2019 seeking to shut down twin portions of Line 5 that run beneath the Straits of Mackinac, the narrow waterways that connect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Nessel argued that anchor strikes could rupture the line, resulting in a devastating spill. That lawsuit is still pending in a federal appellate court.

Michigan regulators in December approved the company's $500 million plan to encase the portion of the pipeline beneath the straits in a tunnel to mitigate risk. The plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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