The question of whether American Indian tribes today possess land that was once their ancestral homelands, predating European colonization, is complex and intertwined with historical treaties, government policies, and ongoing legal battles. This article delves into the current land ownership status of American Indian tribes in the United States and Canada, the history of the reservation system, and the challenges tribes face in reclaiming their heritage. This article also addresses reservations that existed before the defeat of Custer and the movements of Sitting Bull’s followers after the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Land Ownership and Federal Recognition in the United States
In the United States, there are 574 federally recognized tribal governments, and numerous others recognized by individual states or lacking formal recognition altogether. These unrecognized tribes often engage in protracted legal processes, sometimes lasting two decades or more, to achieve federal recognition, which confers certain rights and privileges, including land rights.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a U.S. government agency, plays a crucial role in managing land held in trust for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. This amounts to approximately 55.7 million acres, representing about 2.3% of the total land area in the United States. The BIA is tasked with overseeing various aspects of reservation land management, including forestland development, leasing of resources like oil, minerals, and grazing rights, agricultural programs, water and land rights protection, infrastructure development, and economic advancement.
However, the BIA’s management of these responsibilities has been fraught with controversy. Over the past two centuries, the agency has been accused of mismanagement and of depriving tribes of billions of dollars in royalties and revenues generated from reservation resources. The Cobell v. Kempthorne lawsuit, a class-action lawsuit filed in 1996 by Elouise Cobell, a Blackfoot banker and great-granddaughter of Mountain Chief, aimed to address these alleged injustices and recover funds owed to American Indians. The litigation has faced numerous obstacles, including allegations of document destruction by the BIA and repeated contempt of court findings for failing to produce records.
The Cobell litigation also led to a court order mandating the BIA to address security vulnerabilities on its website, which exposed sensitive data related to American Indian funds to potential cyberattacks. As of the latest updates, the BIA has not fully complied with this order, and its website remains offline.
Today, there are 326 Indian reservations in the United States. The terminology used to describe these lands varies geographically. In California, many reservations are called Rancherias. In New Mexico, they are predominantly known as Pueblos. In certain western states, particularly Nevada, Native American areas are referred to as Indian Colonies. In Alaska, they are called Indian communities or Indian villages. Some tribes possess multiple reservations, while others have none. In recent years, some landless tribes have been acquiring private land to place into trust, and tribes with existing reservations have been purchasing additional land to expand their land base. The emergence of Indian casinos has also led to strategic land exchanges, with tribes trading parcels for more desirable locations for gaming operations.
Past land sales and allotments have resulted in significant fragmentation of reservation lands. Allotment, a policy implemented under the Dawes Act, divided communal tribal lands into individual parcels, which were then inherited by multiple heirs. Over time, these parcels have been further divided, leading to a complex web of ownership interests, many of which have been sold to non-tribal members. This fragmentation poses significant challenges for land management and tribal sovereignty. Slightly more than half of all American Indians reside off their reservations, living in cities and towns alongside other Americans.
The Diminished Footprint: Loss of Ancestral Lands
The reality is that very few American Indian tribes still own or reside on their actual ancestral lands. Many tribes have been relocated to reservations situated on less desirable land than their original homelands, and with a fraction of the land each tribe originally claimed as their territory. While the Navajo, Hopi, Pueblos, Crow, Seminole, and Blackfoot reservations are located on portions of their original territories, these represent a small fraction of their historical land base. Notably, the Hopi, Kootenai Tribe, and the Seminoles have never signed a treaty with any non-Indian nation.
The Development of the Reservation System
The establishment of the reservation system in the United States was a gradual process. On August 1, 1758, the New Jersey Colonial Assembly established the first Indian reservation in North America. In 1789, the first treaties between American Indian tribes and the U.S. government were established, with Indian agents assigned under the Department of War. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced eastern Indian tribes to move west of the Mississippi River, and the U.S. Federal government assumed trusteeship of Indian lands, resources, and affairs.
In 1849, the Office of Indian Affairs was transferred from the War Department to the Department of the Interior, solidifying the practice of relocating Indian people onto reservations. The Department of the Interior assumed management of public lands expropriated from Native people. In 1851, the United States Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, which authorized the creation of Native American reservations on land that is now in the State of Oklahoma. This article addresses that the policy called for the replacement of government officials by religious men, nominated by churches, to oversee the Indian agencies on reservations in order to teach Christianity to the native tribes.
From the 1850s to the 1870s, systematic military campaigns were undertaken to destroy the subsistence base of Plains people, forcing them onto reservations. This included the near-extinction of the bison population, which dwindled from an estimated 20-60 million to less than 1,000 by the 1890s. Reservation treaties sometimes included stipend agreements, in which the federal government would grant a certain amount of goods, including food, to a tribe annually. The implementation of the policy was erratic, however, and in many cases the promised goods were not delivered. In many cases, the lands granted to indian tribes were scrub lands not suited to agricultural cultivation, leaving many tribes who accepted the policy in a state bordering on starvation, as their lands were quickly overhunted.
The Nez Perce Treaty, ratified in 1868, was the last Indian treaty ratified by the U.S. government. In the 1870s, Congress abolished treaty making with Indian nations, and turned to Congress and Executive Orders to make unilateral decisions concerning Indians and their resources. Indian lands and resources were expropriated at unprecedented rates and redistributed to settlers. Large-scale attempts were made to dismantle tribes and assimilate Indian people into the "mainstream" through land reform (Dawes Act 1887), forced reeducation, and outlaw of their cultures. This resulted in widespread poverty, loss of lands/resources, abuse and neglect; and most communities took their culture and languages underground.
The Dawes Act of 1877 drastically reduced Indian landholdings by allotting 160 acres to the heads of families and 80 acres to individuals. "Surplus lands" on the reservations were then opened up to white settlement. Over the years, each subsequent generation of heirs inheriting the family allotment have fractinated many indian lands into very tiny shares, creating a nightmare paper trail that is part of the problem the lawsuit of Cobell vs Kempthorne hopes to address.
The last indian reservation established in Montana was Rocky Boy Reservation, home to the Chipewa-Cree, in 1916. It was established by executive order, not by treaty. The majority of indian reservations were already established at the time of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. There were only a few bands of indians left who refused to comply with orders to go onto the reservations, or who had been on reservations but left their reservation when their people began to starve from lack of resources. The Nez Perce fought the last of the big indian wars and were forced onto reservations in 1877. In 1924 most indians were granted US citizenship and allotment policies ended.
Canadian Indian Reserves
In Canada, the equivalent of the U.S. reservation is called a reserve, indian reserve, or First Nation reserve. The Canadian aboriginal peoples are divided into First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and reservation populations are referenced by bands. An Indian reserve is specified by the (Canadian) Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." Canadian indian reserves are overseen by the Minister of Indian Affairs, who has the right to "determine whether any purpose for which lands in a reserve are used is for the use and benefit of the band." In all, there are over 600 occupied reserves in Canada, most of them quite small in area. The largest is Six Nations 40 in Ontario, which has about 20,000 band members.
The Fate of Sitting Bull and His Followers
After his most famous battle at the Little Big Horn in Montana in June 1876, Sitting Bull left the United States for the Cypress Hills in the Saskatchewan province of Canada. Sitting Bull claimed that to the Sioux, the American and Canadian sides of the border were traditional hunting grounds. On this basis, he claimed the Sioux were as much Canadian Indians as American. Sir John A. Macdonald’s government refused to provide Sitting Bull with land, food or support. Finally, on July 19, 1881, Sitting Bull surrendered at Fort Buford. Shortly after, he and his followers boarded steamships to go to Standing Rock Reservation.
The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is the sixth largest indian reservation in the United States and was established by the Fort Laramie Treaty OF 1868, but drastically reduced in size after gold was discovered in the Black Hills. This article has been discussing if any american indian tribes still own their original homelands?
In conclusion, while some American Indian tribes retain a presence on portions of their ancestral lands, the vast majority have been dispossessed of their original homelands and confined to reservations, often located on less desirable land. The history of the reservation system is marked by broken treaties, forced removals, and policies aimed at assimilation. Despite these challenges, tribes continue to fight for their rights, land, and cultural preservation. This article has provided an overview of the complex history and current status of American Indian land ownership.