- In 1887, the Dawes Act allotted one multi-acre plot of land for nearly every American Indian family, with the goal of moving Indians into the mainstream U.S. economy via enterprises like farming and ranching.
- The act stipulated that the federal government would manage the allotments for 25 years, and then—once the Indians had established their affairs on the land— hand it over to them.
- Today, the federal government still manages 11 million acres of that land.
- Because of a historic lack of probate laws in Indian Country, and the large number of Indians who have died without a will, many allotments have been passed down to every single living heir of an original owner, creating what are called highly fractionated tracts of land, with hundreds—even thousands—of owners.
- More than 1,200 people own a single tract near Crow Creek in South Dakota.
- As part of its responsibility to manage the Indian allotments, the Department of the Interior must manage, and disburse to Indians via trust accounts, the income derived from third-party uses of the land—uses like grazing, oil extraction, and commercial and residential leases.
- Interior estimates that half of the highly fractionated parcels of land in Indian Country generated no income in 2013.
- As of June 30, the department was searching for 63,499 Indians with trust accounts whose whereabouts were unknown. The combined value of those accounts was $98.5 million.
- After a 2009 class-action settlement concerning the accounting of trust funds, Congress appropriated $1.9 billion for Interior to purchase land interests from willing sellers and transfer the land to the sellers’ tribes.
- More than $1 billion is held in trust for eight Sioux nations—including the Oglala Sioux at Pine Ridge (where this family lives). Most of that money is interest earned on a $102 million settlement with the U.S. government, from 1980, for the government’s taking of the Black Hills. The tribes will likely never touch the money: They want the land back.
For more on the science of society, and to support our work, sign up for our free email newsletters and subscribe to our bimonthly magazine. Digital editions are available in the App Store (iPad) and on Google Play (Android) and Zinio (Android, iPad, PC/MAC, iPhone, and Win8).
