have this kind of really frank and honest discussion is something I’ve not seen in my 40 years of work in this area.” See https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/deb-haalands-visit-home-grandparents-prayers. Pueblo Governors also expressed their hope that the Interior Department would extend greater protections to the Chaco Culture National Historic Park that is held as sacred by their people. Restoring Tribal Homelands In April, Secretary Haaland took decisive action to reverse a course set by the previous administration that harmed the ability of Tribal governments to restore their land base. She announced several decisions to reverse actions that complicated the Indian Reorganization Act’s (IRA) Indian fee to trust process. Indian tribes lost or had taken hundreds of millions of acres of tribal homelands through past policies of Removal, Allotment, and Termination. The IRA provides Tribal governments with a federal process to restore lands to Native communities. The Obama Administration prioritized the tribal land to trust process, approving applications to move more than 560,000 of tribal fee lands into trust status from 2009 - 2017. It has been reported that the Trump Administration approved approximately 75,000 acres into trust from 2017 - 2021. To help expedite the land to trust process, on April 27, 2021, Secretary Haaland issued Secretarial Order No. 3400, which returns review of tribal fee land to trust applications to regional BIA directors. The order reverses a 2017 move to place these decisions under the jurisdiction of department headquarters, where they lingered for years. Secretary Haaland acknowledged, “[W]e have an obligation to work with Tribes to protect their lands and ensure that each Tribe has a homeland where its citizens can live together and lead safe and fulfilling lives.” Secretary Haaland also approved the revocation of past Interior legal opinions that added burdens on tribal governments as they seek to use the IRA’s land into trust process. The decision restored the Obama Interior Department’s 2014 M-Opinion to determine whether a Tribe was “under federal jurisdiction”, a relatively new process that was made necessary due to the Supreme Court’s 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar decision. The Department is reviewing the current land to trust process, and will soon release details on proposals to improve the system. Moving Forward While Confronting the Past On June 22, 2021, Secretary Haaland announced the Department’s “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative”, which will investigate the loss of human life and the lasting consequences of residential Indian boarding schools. The investigation will gather records and information related to the Department’s oversight and implementation of the Indian boarding schools, conduct formal consultations with Tribal Nations on all matters relating to the Initiative. A final written report on the investigation will be submitted to the Secretary by April 1, 2022. The atrocities of government boarding schools for Native children were highlighted with the recent discovery of unmarked graves of indigenous children in Canada. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Secretary Haaland detailed the “United States’ history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.” She added, “I am a product of these horrific assimilation policies. My maternal grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13. Many children like them never made it back home.” Secretary Haaland acknowledged that the lasting and profound impacts of the federal government’s boarding school system have never been appropriately addressed. “I know that this process will be long and difficult. I know that this process will be painful. It won’t undo the heartbreak and loss we feel. But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace.” The historic term of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is an opportunity to put this past to rest, educate the American public, and help Native communities heal, while setting new precedent and opening a new era for Indian tribes to work in true partnership with the United States to improve the lives of reservation residents.
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