During #DemConvention week, I want to highlight some policies the Federal Government should adopt re Indigenous people.

Yesterday, I discussed treaties. Today: Land

Much of federal Indian law/policy is rooted in land. There are 56+ million acres of Indian trust land (for tribes and individuals) across the country. Far less than land holdings for National Parks, National Forests, or BLM.

1. Tribal jurisdiction depends too much on the type of title for land ownership (federal trust, fee, restricted, or mixed). This makes any type of land management, jurisdiction, or development impossibly hard. Let's simplify by focusing on boundaries

2. More than 80% of tribal requests to place land into trust status are for lands already within Reservations. These should be approved as a matter of course, with rare exceptions. Change regs and policies to make that happen.

3. Tribes are always expected to account for off-rez impacts of land and water use. That street must run both ways. Need to bolster process under NEPA, CWA, and CAA to ensure tribes can protect lands and waters from off-rez developments.

4. Federal agencies manage hundreds of millions of acres of land and water - sometimes within or next to Reservations, or containing religious sites or treaty resources. Facilitate transfer to tribal ownership in some instances, and better co-mgmt.

5. Speaking of transfer to tribal ownership, the federal surplus and excess property disposal process is very complex and effectively excludes tribes in most cases (due to costs and CERCLA liability for Dept. of the Interior). This needs changes to allow tribes to participate

6. NEPA provides a good framework for environmental protection, but it unintentionally burdens Rez Indians more than most Americans. Need more Categorical Exclusions for basic on-rez activities to make communities livable.

7. Pres. Clinton was sincere in desire to protect tribal religious practices. Issued Exec Order to protect sacred sites. Over 2.5 decades, it has been watered down.

Bears Ears process took Herculean effort.

Need to reissue and strengthen so it works as intended.

Lastly, some context. For the past 2 decades, a lot of the controversy about tribes restoring homelands was based on battles about tribal gaming (a tiny fraction of tribal land acquisition requests). That controversy seems to be subsiding, thankfully.

The Trump Admin has approved a number of tribal gaming applications with almost no national controversy. Most have barely registered a blip in Indian country political circles.

This makes politics of Indianland acquisition easier, but challenges remain.

Municipal and County governments often say that tribal trust lands diminish their tax bases and diminish services. Much of this is overblown, but not all.

Fed Govt provides payments in lieu of taxes to local govs all the time for Parks, Nat Forests, and other lands. ("PILTs")

Congress appropriates money for PILTs every year. They also fund local schools near reservations through "Federal Impact Aid" to offset lack of local property tax base.

If the US is going to help offset local gov taxes for its landholdings for parks, forests, and BLM lands (many of which are used for intensive private development) there is no sound policy reason to exclude Indian lands.

These PILTs are psrt of the "silent subsidies" the Fed Gov provides to private companies and rural communities. Tribes are excluded. Why?

Including the BIA in the PILT program will facilitate Indian land ownership and Rez consolidation by turning down political heat.

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P.S. For folks concerned about federal spending, Indian trust landholdings are far smaller than BLM (245 million acres), Nat Parks (85 million acres) and Nat Forests (193 million acres).

Applying PILT to new trust lands wouldn't cost anything to Fed Gov (comparatively)