And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Date: Mon, 03 May 1999 12:10:13 -0500 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: As posted WSJ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" ---------- URL for this Article: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB925679254513786089.djm The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition May 3, 1999 Politics & Policy Indian Tribe Finds Value Of Its Land Lies in Unity By JOHN J. FIALKA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ROSEBUD, S.D. -- Like really difficult puzzles? Consider one that Howard D. Valandra, the head of a land-trading operation run by the Rosebud tribe of Sioux, struggles with almost every day. It is called tract 2337, a nondescript 320-acre chunk of the rolling, grassy hills on this reservation. It has about 450 owners. Some own pieces smaller than this newspaper. But the pieces have no precise location. Under the federal laws that govern Indian tribes, each owner holds an "undivided interest." If an owner wants to graze a cow, dig a hole or build a house, he or she needs consent of all the other owners. Some are scattered all over the U.S. Earnings for 0.0003189 of an Acre This problem -- called fractionation -- is a headache for many American Indians. It is a migraine for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is being sued in Washington for allegedly slipshod management of a banking system it runs for Indians. It is the BIA's job to lease fractionated land and then to deposit the earnings of each owner. In tract 2337, not an unusual tract, it means figuring the earnings for as little as 0.0003189 of an acre. This mess began, as many do, with a well-intentioned act by Congress. It was a 19th century scheme to get Indians involved with private property. Instead, it threw many into poverty and into the numbing, bureaucratic embrace of the BIA. "You know, if you take away the government's political paternalism, Indians might actually do goofy things like start making money," quips Mr. Valandra. Mr. Valandra's mission is to put the pieces of his reservation back together. It is slow, agonizing work, but the Rosebud is one of the few tribes that give owners cash or trading rights for land. He plans his buys strategically, gaining holdings in the best pieces of land, pieces held by older tribal members, or land that might otherwise be sold to non-Indians. "We start out with 1% and continue to nibble away until we get 100% of a tract. Then we can assign it," he explains. So far, he's nibbled up 28% of Tract 2337. Another 50 Years to Finish the Job Under the arrangement, the purchaser of newly assembled land gets ownership only if he or she agrees to make a will leaving the land to one person, thus preventing re-fractionation. In the last 50 years, Mr. Valandra's office has bought into about 75% of the reservation's fractionated tracts. He figures owning them outright will take another 50 years. Under the old scheme, because the Indians were unable to control their land, the BIA often leased it at bargain rates to non-Indian farmers and ranchers. Under the trading plan, the tribe manages the newly reassembled land and makes a small profit, which it uses to buy new land. The Rosebud's experience has caught the eye of Kevin Gover, a Pawnee who heads the BIA. He hopes to use it to help unscramble land on other reservations, including his own, where he owns 1/27th of a 40-acre plot inherited from his grandfather. He has tried to get 12 other relatives to merge their fractions with his so the tribe can manage it, but they refuse, claiming emotional ties to the land. "It's part of the weirdness of the situation," he explains. 'It Just Makes the Land Valueless' The BIA spends $35 each year to manage Mr. Gover's account and to mail him quarterly statements reporting his earnings, which amount to seven cents. "The worst of this is that it just makes the land valueless," he adds. "And people wonder why Indians are so poor." Mr. Gover proposes to start a $10 million national revolving loan fund modeled on the Rosebud's system that can begin to reassemble land parcels, and in the process, remove BIA's worst accounting problems. Of the 300,000 bank accounts his agency currently manages, he estimates, 100,000 hold less than $25, mostly money dribbling in from tiny fractions of land. The problem gets worse with each generation, notes Mr. Gover. His agency has recently installed new accounting software that can track pieces as small as one trillionth of an acre. Tract 2337 here was initially deeded by the government to one Indian family through the 1887 "Allotment Act," a law stemming from the efforts of religious groups and other reformers who convinced Congress that deeding parcels of land to Indians would turn them into prosperous farmers and ranchers. Some Indians sold theirs for as little as $1.50 an acre. Others clung to it, regarding it as an irreplaceable gift from their ancestors. The BIA, which provides legal, banking and real-estate management service to Indians as part of its trustee relationship, never got around to explaining the need for making wills. "One thing they forgot is that, culturally, we don't like to speak of death," explains Mr. Valandra. One of Nation's Poorest Counties As the original owners died and the land descended through state inheritance laws, ownership was splintered by each new generation. When 51% of a tract's owners could no longer agree on the price for a lease, the BIA took over its management. Todd County, which includes the heart of the Rosebud reservation, is one of the 10 poorest counties in the nation. The average income is $5,000. There is 80% unemployment. The life span for the average tribal member is 55, a fact that has accelerated the pace of fractionation. A Hoover administration study noted in the 1930s "an enormous increase in the details of administration without a compensating advance in the economic ability of the Indians." It recommended a $100,000 federal loan program to reassemble Indian land. The price was deemed too steep. By 1943, the pattern of land ownership here looked like an automobile windshield after a crash. The average Rosebud owned tiny fractions on different, unrelated pieces of land. That year, the tribe set up the "Tribal Land Enterprise" to issue what amounts to stock certificates in exchange for land. A small landowner who bought them could trade them for an intact piece of land or sell them for cash. Some Rosebuds used it to assemble large ranches. But for most tribal members, the concept of land ownership, let alone stock trading, was mystifying. To the average Indian, Tribal Land Enterprise, or TLE, came to stand for "Tell Lie Every Time," according to a tribal history. Mr. Valandra, a businessman who earlier built a national computer-software business here, took over the enterprise in 1996 and convinced younger Rosebuds that trading can work. Using profits from managing newly reassembled land, the enterprise recently snapped up a 13,000 acre ranch. This was news. In the last 100 years, the Rosebud have lost two-thirds of what was once a three-million-acre reservation through sales to non-Indians. Greg Grimshaw, chairman of the county's board of commissioners, complains that the reversal of this familiar pattern takes property off the county's tax rolls. Now, he's short of money the county needs to grade its gravel roads. "I don't know where this ends up," he sighs. Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
