Beyond Belief: How official government policies stole land from Tribal Nations.

I was visiting the home of my mother’s ancestors an Anishinaabeg reservation in northern Wisconsin. I was out fishing one day and noticed something and started to think about what I observed. On the chain of some dozen or so lakes very few tribal members had homes on the lake shores. Even fewer tribal members seemed to be out enjoying the sun and recreating on the lakes. Every boat I saw was occupied by non-native people and other than the handful of kids I saw swimming on this day everyone else I saw recreating in the water seemed to be non-tribal members. The inequalities that exist in society at large are played out and observable on a tribal reservation beyond the very existence of the reservation. The checkerboard land ownership maps that is evidence of the collusion of local, state, and federal agencies to obtain what the tribes hold most dear, the earth This landownership pattern also shows how serious the United States takes it treaties and trust responsibility For more on this topic click the link trust responsibilities

I checked an online real estate websites to look at land for sale on the Lac du Flambeau reservation. Here’s what I found, on Long Lake there is a home on 0.7 acres is for sale for a mere $600,000 and you can get 2.24 acres with a log home for $1.2 million. These are not isolated few and far between parcels of land. Across the lake from my sister and brother in-law’s home on Pokegama Lake there is a property for sale for $1.3 million. My sister and her family were very lucky to acquire a tribal lease the lot with lake frontage because the Lac du Flambeau Tribe has enacted policies that only allows tribal members to lease any trust land that has lake access. Although it must be said it is not prime lakefront property. There is a 50-foot-high escarpment between the house and the lake shore. The trip from the lake up the sandy and gravelly glacial till slope has its challenges with random ankle turning cobbles strewn about, while the gently sloping and flat parcels of land are where you find the expensive homes.

Land that is supposed to be set aside for a tribe and guaranteed by official treaties signed between the United States government and the leaders of tribal nations. One may ask themselves how did this come about? How did land set aside for tribal people almost miraculously become not for tribal people? People who know the history, the violent history, the multitude of illegal actions, and unenforced assurances in each of the very legal treaties. It is a fact that each treaty has been broken. ( The trail of broken treaties: Here is a link to the main treaties that have been broken.)

Why is there such a disparity within the external boundaries of a Ojibwe reservation on who has access to lakes? Well, if for those unfamiliar with the history of land policies enacted by the federal government. The Dawes Act of 1887 also known as the general allotment act. This act allowed tribal territories (reservations) within the United States to be regulated and distributed to tribal members as essentially private property AKA an allotment. Driving traditional systems of land tenure of communally held land rights within a tribe to that of private property with the intent for tribal members to "assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property."

Consider now the common sense of this act. The idea of private property never existed for tribal people prior to the Dawes Act. On reservations there didn’t exist any economic structures with which tribal members could even hope for employment and employment off the reservation was to put it mildly problematic because during these times it was illegal for tribal members to be off the reservation. On top of that there was no consideration of tribal organization such as some tribes are matrilineal, some patrilineal, or how will children fit in to all these rules and regulations.

Once the land was allotted to all those tribal members that qualify to receive an allotment there was “extra” land left over. With this move alone large swaths of land guaranteed through treaties were now taken by the federal government, because the land was deemed “excess” and was no longer needed. So now tribal members with no jobs are now owners of property and very soon thereafter property taxes are due on these lands. This set up the circumstances of a group of people with no experience in private property structure are now a part of an alien system expected to navigate that system and give that system money. Which results in more land loss for the tribes as this private property goes into tax default and is then taken by the state to be sold off to pay those tax fees. Honestly, only the prime real estate seems to have been taken. The state isn’t taking over marshlands or swamps. Nor does the state seem interested in forested lands at this time. The lands that get taken are lake front property with extremely high market value for recreational summer homes.

Those forms of government sanctioned land theft were the bulwarks on which other forms of theft were built. My mother worked for a few years at the tribal land management office. They kept track of leases, sales, and purchases of real estate on the reservation. They also spent some their time inspecting the archives that date back to the beginning of allotment period. I was told of many illegal activities that are documented in these archives. One such transaction illustrates the depth of non-native people’s immoral vampiric thirst for land. The archives document a young orphaned native girl who was the sole heir of hundreds of acres of land because of disease. A kindly non-native person agreed to adopt the girl and that paperwork was filed for this person to become the guardian. Soon thereafter a purchase agreement was filed between the girl’s new guardian with the local postmaster for all the girl’s land holdings. That purchase of the land was approved followed closely by the paperwork to terminate the guardianship with all this paperwork filed and approved by the BIA.

I think about this series of events often. It always leads me to deep sadness, hopelessness, and bitter anger. My emotions run white hot over the abuse this girl endured as a pawn in land theft scheme that is the direct result of the exploitation of these governmental policies and of a human being. There are so many layers to this land theft that it can only be called a conspiracy. I have so many questions that I feel need answers even all these years later. How did the person who initiated the adoption know that this little native girl was the sole heir to hundreds of acres of land? How was a buyer found so quickly? What happened to all the money that should have gone to the little girl? You must question the efficiency of the BIA’s bureaucracy, the filings, and the approvals performed in such a quick and timely manner.