Scared Monkeys Discussion Forum

WASHINGTON — After bungling the management of Indian lands for generations, the federal government wants to make amends by spending nearly $2 billion to buy 10 million acres of land for 150 tribes across the nation.

That’s roughly twice the size of Massachusetts and would mark the largest expansion of the U.S. government’s land trust for tribes, which now covers 46 million acres.

To make the plan work, the government wants to find willing sellers to buy back reservation land it first gave to individual tribal members in 1887, often in tracts of 80 to 160 acres.

“We can improve Indian Country if people will go along with this program and sell their interests back to their tribes,” Kevin Washburn, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said in an interview.

It won’t be easy. With the land changing hands over the decades, many parcels now have hundreds or thousands of owners.

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“There’s no love for California Indian Country,” said Gabriel Galanda, a Seattle lawyer and a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Mendocino County, Calif. He called the program “a disaster” in the making.

When tribal leaders met with government officials in Seattle, Chief James Allan of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Tribe complained that 45 percent of the money will go to just seven tribes.

“We’re all going to be fighting for scraps,” he said.

The plan calls for the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to buy back more than 92,000 parcels from private landowners. The effort, expected to last until 2022, will begin with pilot projects in Washington state, Montana and South Dakota.

Many property owners, with close ties to the land, are expected to be reluctant sellers.

“This is a modern day retaking of the land and, given the historical implications of that, they don’t want to relive it,” Les Riding-In, assistant dean and director of graduate studies at the University of Texas-Arlington and a member of the Comanche Tribe, said in an interview. “It’s reminiscent of how the government took the land back when colonization was happening.”