By Hannah Grissel
Only two percent of United States landmass belongs to Native American Reservations, but according to a 2009 estimate by the Council of Energy Resource tribes, energy resources on this land could be worth up to $1.5 trillion. This more or less equates to one-fifth of the nation’s uranium, coal, oil, and gas reserves existing on reservations.
The massive amount of profit that could be made off exploiting native lands is tempting to energy companies. Leading policymakers who benefit from these company’s profits are just as tempted to reform regulations that inhibit said company’s agendas.
Now, according to Reuters, “a group of advisers to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands.”
Essentially, what we’re hearing from the Trump campaign is a hope to privatize Native lands while also implicating that much of the land should be in the hands of non-tribal members. This is a state of mind that would work to continue our legacy of colonization by stripping nations of their sovereignty and further erase their cultural heritage.
Factually, American Indian communities face poverty rates at least 12 percent higher than the national average. And if we look to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, the poverty rate is exceptionally higher at 43 percent, according to Pew Research Center. This is a national disgrace and becomes an issue proponents will use to bolster their argument for privatization.
These proponents cite what Manny Jules, a former chief of the Kamloops Indian Band of British Columbia, notes as a reason for substandard conditions on Reservations. Jules states, “We’ve been legislated out of the economy. When you don’t have individual property rights, you can’t build, you can’t be bonded, you can’t pass on wealth.”
Arguably, Jules is correct. Allowing Natives to have secure private property rights, just as all other Americans do, will inevitably bring forth positive change. However, to argue that reforming legislation, allowing non-tribal entities to buy out tribal land will bear only positive results, denies a long history of oppression and exploitation through privatization.
After centuries of wars waged against them, treaties allotted Natives in the 19th century vast areas of Reservation land. Then, in 1887 when the U.S. government deemed their use of lands non-productive (read: they wanted to assimilate them) the Dawes Severalty Act was enacted. This act took away 60 million acres of sovereign land, only to give it away for free to white settlers.
This form of unjust land seizure in the name of privatization continued into 1906 when the Burke Act, an amendment to the Dawes act, was passed. According to Indian Land Tenure Foundation the amendment resulted in another 30 million acres of land loss. After all this, only a third of the original land reserved for Natives was left.
Since the initial stripping of sovereign lands, the federal government has legislatively blocked Natives from utilizing their land while simultaneously opening it up to private entities without discussion. This is what we just saw in Standing Rock.
Poverty and its symptoms seen on Native Reservations are merely the consequences of over a century of discriminatory rights violations and land seizures. More privatization will not fix the suffering it has caused.
For positive change to happen, the Land Tenure system must definitely be reformed and not in way which will take away sovereign lands from Natives. Native Americans should be able to recover or be compensated for illegally seized lands. They should gain full control over all lands and resources currently belonging to them, in addition to being given the same secure property rights as other citizens. And quite honestly, individuals and communities should be given supplementary reparations for centuries of oppression and destruction of their cultures.