Indian Issues: BLM's Program for Issuing Individual Indian Allotments on Public Lands Is No Longer Viable

Beginning in the late nineteenth century the federal government began an effort to assimilate Indians by transferring them from communal tribal existence to individual land ownership. The Act of February 8, 1887, commonly referred to as the General Allotment Act, initiated the federal government's Indian allotment policy. The act authorized the President to allot parcels of land to individual Indians--generally in sizes of 40, 80, or 160 acres--on Indian reservations and on public lands. The act was implemented by the Department of the Interior's (Interior) Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Under this authority, BIA issued millions of acres of individual allotments on Indian reservations, and BLM issued thousands of acres of individual Indian allotments on public lands. However, in 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act largely reversed the federal government's Indian allotment policy and replaced it with a policy that encouraged tribal self-governance. Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act also provided the Secretary of the Interior new authority to acquire land, on and off reservations, on behalf of federally recognized tribes or their members. While the Indian Reorganization Act ended BIA's authority to issue allotments on Indian reservations, it did not address BLM's authority to issue allotments on public lands. Almost 120 years after the 1887 General Allotment Act, BLM still retains that authority and questions have been raised about the continued need for it. Individual Indian allotments present a unique management challenge for BIA--the multiple ownership of a single property (fractionation). In an earlier report on Indian land ownership profiles at select reservations, we found that the 1887 allotment act provided, among other things, that the heirs of an Indian who had been allocated land would inherit the descendant's ownership interests in the land. Because of this provision, the ownership of some allotted land has continually become fractionated as ownership interests have passed from generation to generation. With fractionated land, development (e.g., building a home site) can be difficult because it may require agreement among multiple ownership interests of the development plan. In some cases, fractionated lands have up to several hundred ownership interests. In addition, fractionated land creates increased management responsibilities for BIA because BIA must work with growing ownership interests on the same parcel of land, for example, in distributing mineral royalties. With the passage of the Indian Land Consolidation Act of 1983, the federal government has been trying to reduce the problem of fractionation by consolidating individual Indian land ownership interests into tribal ownership. A 2000 amendment to the 1983 act established a fund to assist tribes in buying back fractional interests in reservation lands. The fiscal year 2006 House Appropriations Committee Report for Interior's appropriation bill directed GAO to study BIA's procedures and practices in implementing its land in trust regulations. We issued our report in July 2006. In response to the direction in the House report and subsequent discussions with Congressional offices, we also agreed to assess the extent to which BLM's program for issuing allotments to individual Indians on public lands is still viable. This correspondence transmits the results of our review of BLM's Indian allotment authority. In addition, we are providing some supplementary information to our July 2006 report on the amount of land held in trust for newly recognized and restored tribes and an identification of landless tribes.