This year, Native American Heritage Month has a new meaning for Indigenous people.
November has been a time for America’s indigenous people to share their customs, music, dance, crafts, and culture since 1990. The past 15 years have seen a resurgence of these traditional traditions as a result of a series of landmark triumphs that have strengthened environmental protection and advanced the battle against climate change by consolidating and returning millions of acres of Native American territory.
Even though these victories are enormous, political changes can still affect them.
A second Donald Trump administration poses significant challenges to previous advancements as Native Americans uphold customs ingrained in the land and environment. Tribal sovereignty may be in jeopardy due to his attempts to undermine environmental safeguards and cabinet selections that support the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a comprehensive conservative policy agenda that spans 92 pages. One item on the agenda is the possible opening of federally administered public lands that hold cultural importance for tribes to the production of fossil fuels.
We will regress under Project 2025 and a Trump government, according to Judith LeBlanc, executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance and a Caddo Nation member from Oklahoma. Climate change, energy extraction, and the sale of public lands are currently our biggest barriers to living out our belief systems.
15 years of land development
Alongside federal programs like the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, which started under the Obama administration after the 2009 settlement of Cobell v. Salazar, the Land Back movement, which advocates for the return of traditional Indigenous lands to communal ownership, has gained momentum over the past ten years.
Decades of poor management that cost Native American people and tribes billions of funds kept in trust were brought to light by the historic class action case. The case demonstrated how the U.S. government continued to struggle against Indigenous tribes in an effort to make amends for historical wrongs.
With $1.9 billion going toward the consolidation of more than 3 million acres of Native lands across 15 states and $1.5 billion going to individual tribes and members, the government reached a $3.4 billion settlement. In order to facilitate the development and protection of indigenous lands, the initiative returned fragmented native lands to individual allotments established by the Dawes Act of 1887 and later divided among several heirs in later years to tribal trust ownership.
According to a speech officially terminating the program in December 2023, the checkboard system of property ownership on many reservations historically prevented communities and landowners from making fundamental decisions about their homelands. Tribal communities now have more control over how their lands are used, from conservation to economic development initiatives, thanks to the Land Buy-Back Program’s advancements.
Growing support for returning land
FILE – As environmental and indigenous activists demonstrate in front of the White House in Washington, October 11, 2021, Wolf Ramerez of Houston, Texas, center, joins members of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas in raising their fists. Decades of legislation supporting tribal autonomy are being overturned by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gives states the power to punish some crimes on Native American territory. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo, File)AP
The Land Back movement’s objectives of restoring Indigenous control over lands, bolstering tribal sovereignty, and empowering tribes to exercise self-determination over their territories were expedited by the government program.
As a result of the movement, many states, towns, and the federal government have returned land that was previously owned by tribes.It is a call to action for the freedom of Indigenous people, according to Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota president of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous organization leading the Land Back movement.
Research by Din, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian journalist and photographer Kalen Goodluck, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, shows that since 2003, at least 100 tribal land recoveries have taken place, involving more than 70 federally recognized tribes, an intertribal coalition, and six Indigenous-owned land trusts.
According to Goodluck, between 2003 and September 2023, tribes reclaimed almost 420,000 acres through federal and state laws, land title purchases, transfers from land conservancies, and private gifts.
Ancestral lands in Illinois, Virginia, Oregon, New York, Minnesota, and California have been restored by tribes.
On the fifth anniversary of California’s apology to Native Americans, in the summer of 2023, the state made the first such transfer under a new state directive, giving the Shasta Indian Nation over 2,800 acres of ancestral land and the Fort Independence Indian Community of Paiute Indians the 40-acre Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery. The Yurok Tribe of Northern California strengthened salmon habitats and ceremonial rituals by reclaiming 125 acres along the Klamath River.
There have been a few small but noteworthy land exchanges. In 2023, Three Creeks Healing Retreat sold a five-acre site to a water advocacy group that represented three California tribes. After 200 years, a private citizen in Altadena, Los Angeles County, gave one acre back to descendants of the Tongva Tribe.
Advantages of the environment for Indigenous stewardship
Returning the land to Indigenous stewardship improves the ecosystem more broadly than simply Native populations. Tribal lands are frequently managed with sustainability in mind, combining contemporary research with traditional ecological knowledge.
This strategy is demonstrated by the Yurok Tribe’s efforts to rebuild salmon populations in the Klamath River, which flows through northern California and southern Oregon. For many years, the tribe pushed for the dismantling of dams in order to restore local biodiversity and fish habitats. By the end of 2024, the final of four dams is expected to be removed.
Last October, scientists discovered the first salmon in the Klamath River basin in 112 years.
Using the Klamath-Modoc name for salmon, the secretary of the Klamath Tribes stated, “The return of our relatives, the c iyaal s, is overwhelming for our tribe.” For many decades, this is what our members believed in and worked for. Like our indigenous people, the salmon know where home is and have returned as soon as possible.
Trump’s environmental policy objectives for 2016 and 2024
FILE – This file photo was taken on August 10, 2005, and shows the Anasazi ruins at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico taken by tourist Chris Farthing from Suffolks County, England. As U.S. land managers seek to update an antiquated guide for managing oil and gas drilling across a vast region of northwest New Mexico, one of the options they are considering would prioritize the preservation and protection of Native American cultural sites. (File: Jeff Geissler/AP Photo)AP
The fossil fuel industries, which are expected to control federal land policy under a Trump administration, stand in stark contrast to these practices. Trump has made no secret of his intentions to give priority to mining, oil, and gas projects that, according to study, cause long-term ecological impact, such as habitat destruction and contaminated streams.
Take a look at Trump’s first term to get an idea of how he would affect Native Americans in his second. Trump oversaw significant changes to federal land management regulations between 2016 and 2020, many of which had a disproportionate impact on Native American lands.
Those who eschewed Congressional screening were appointed to leadership positions in the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The annual White House Tribal Nations Conference, which was a defining feature of Obama’s administration for eight years, was terminated by Trump.
Early in his term, Trump rolled back important wildlife and public lands protections using executive orders and memorandums. Contentious projects like the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, which encountered strong and protracted opposition from Native communities and their supporters, were expedited by his America First energy strategy. Trump also cut the Bears Ears National Monument, an Indigenous-led project, by 85%, destroying its reputation as a model of cooperative land management.
Trump’s broader policy priorities carry serious concerns, even though Native American issues were not a major focus of his 2024 campaign. The Antiquities Act of 1906, a pillar of American conservation legislation that established national monuments, many of which safeguard sacred Indigenous sites, may be repealed.
Trump has frequently distanced himself from Project 2025, which specifically advocates for increased oil and gas extraction on public lands. Areas like New Mexico’s Chaco Cultural Historic National Park, where tribal leaders have battled for decades to stop oil and gas leasing within ten miles of the park, could suffer greatly as a result of these policies.In 2023, President Joe Biden stopped oil extraction in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, which is home to the Gwich people, and issued an order prohibiting drilling in the park for 20 years.
These safeguards are not infallible. A Trump government led by Project 2025 would significantly reduce protections at federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bureau of Land Management, and Trump might cancel previous executive orders.
If confirmed as the next Interior Secretary, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, one of the wealthiest politicians in the nation, may be a key player in Trump’s policy reform. As governor, Burgum championedstrong pro-fossil fuel policiesand would manage U.S. federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges, and oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes as Secretary of the Interior.
Along with overseeing the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas leases, which significantly slowed under Biden, Burgum would also head a new energy council aimed at establishing American energy dominance globally.
The Sierra Club stated on November 15 that he has long favored removing important environmental protections in order to benefit polluters.Doug Burgum has a long history with the fossil fuel industry, and if elected, he would undoubtedly carry on Donald Trump’s campaign to sell off our public lands to his polluter friends. The Interior Department is tasked with protecting our lands, which are the biggest asset of our country.
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