Cobell Land Buy-Back Fund Four Million Acres and Billions of Dollars Short

A federal land acquisition program to benefit tribes will leave unrecovered 4 million acres of fractionated land, reservation land divided up and allotted to individual members, interests when it ends in 2022, according to the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations’ 2016 Status Report released November 1.

That is, unless the Interior Department and Congress can find a way to extend the program and increase its funding by several billion dollars.

The copy.9 billion Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations was established in 2012 as part of the 2009 settlement of a lawsuit against the federal government alleging it had mismanaged individual American Indian trust funds. So far, the program has paid out $900 million to purchase the equivalent of 1.7 million acres of land and put it under tribal, rather than individual, control.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/11/14/cobell-land-buy-back-fund-four-million-acres-and-billions-dollars-short-166413