Department of Transportation

For two decades, one of the most frustrating obstacles to tribes reclaiming certain stolen land was state law, specifically law that prevented environmental mitigation property from going through the fee-to-trust process. It often worked this way: The state Department of Transportation would ask a tribe for right-of-way to complete a construction project. In exchange the state would transfer land to the tribe. But there was a catch: If the land included environmental mitigation properties in the transfer, then by state law, the tribal government would have to waive sovereign immunity and agree not to place property into trust status. The…