Native Americans won back millions of acres. Here’s how Trump could take them away
For Indigenous people, Native American Heritage Month carries a different weight this year.
Since 1990, November has been a time for America’s first people to share their culture, traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways of life. These cultural practices have experienced a renaissance in the past 15 years amid a wave of historic victories that have consolidated and returned millions of acres of Native American land, strengthening environmental protection and advancing the fight against climate change.
While these gains are monumental, they are not immune to political shifts.
As Native Americans honor traditions deeply rooted in the land and environment, recent progress faces serious threats under a second Donald Trump presidency. His plans to dismantle environmental protections, combined with cabinet appointments aligned with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—a sweeping 922-page conservative policy agenda—could threaten tribal sovereignty. The agenda includes the potential opening of federally managed public lands of cultural significance to tribes to fossil fuel extraction.
“Under Project 2025, and a Trump administration, we will go backwards,” said Judith LeBlanc, executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance and member of Oklahoma’s Caddo Nation. “At this point, our main obstacle to practicing our belief systems is climate change, energy extraction, and the selling off of public lands.”
15 years of land progress
Over the last decade, the momentum of the Land Back movement, which promotes the return of traditional Indigenous lands to communal ownership, has gained momentum alongside federal programs like the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, which began under the Obama administration following the 2009 settlement of Cobell v. Salazar.
The landmark class action lawsuit highlighted decades of mismanagement that cost Native American individuals and tribes billions of dollars held in trust. The case underlined how, even in the modern era, the U.S. government was still fighting against Indigenous groups, trying to right the wrongs of the past.
The government settled the case for $3.4 billion, with $1.5 billion going to individual tribes and members and $1.9 billion helping consolidate over 3 million acres of Native lands in 15 states. The program restored fractionated native lands—individual allotments created by the Dawes Act of 1887 and later divided among multiple heirs in later years—to tribal trust ownership, making it easier for tribes to develop and protect their lands.
“The checkboard system of land ownership on many reservations historically left communities and landowners unable to make basic decisions about their homelands,” said during a speech formally ending the program in Dec. 2023. “The Land Buy-Back Program’s progress puts the power back in the hands of tribal communities to determine how their lands are used — from conservation to economic development projects.”
Growing movement for land return
FILE – Wolf Ramerez of Houston, Texas, center, joins others with the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas in holding up his fists as indigenous and environmental activists protest in front of the White House in Washington, Oct. 11, 2021. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding state authority to prosecute some crimes on Native American land is upending decades of law in support of tribal sovereignty. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)AP
The federal scheme accelerated the Land Back movement’s goal of returning lands to Indigenous control, strengthening tribal sovereignty, and enabling tribes to exercise self-determination over their lands.
The movement has led to numerous municipalities, states, and the federal government returning land that once belonged to tribes. Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota president of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous group spearheading the Land Back movement, called it “a war cry for the liberation of Indigenous people.”
Since 2003, at least 100 tribal land recoveries have occurred involving over 70 federally recognized tribes, an intertribal coalition, and six Indigenous-owned land trusts, according to research by Kalen Goodluck, a Diné, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian journalist and photographer based in Albuquerque, N. Mex.
Goodluck found tribes recovered around 420,000 acres between 2003 and Sept. 2023., through private donations, transfers from land conservancies, land title purchases, and federal and state legislation.
Tribes have reclaimed ancestral lands in Illinois, Virginia, Oregon, New York, Minnesota, and California.
In the summer 2023, on the 5th anniversary of California’s apology to Native American people, the state transferred over 2,800 acres of ancestral land to the Shasta Indian Nation and the 40-acre Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery to the Fort Independence Indian Community of Paiute Indians, marking the first such transfer under a new state directive. The Yurok Tribe of Northern California reclaimed 125 acres along the Klamath River, strengthening salmon habitats and ceremonial practices.
Some land transfers have been tiny but significant. In 2023, a water advocacy group representing three California tribes bought a five-acre property from Three Creeks healing retreat. Meanwhile, a private resident in Altadena, Los Angeles County, returned one acre to Tongva Tribe descendants after 200 years.
Environmental benefits to Indigenous stewardship
The land returned to Indigenous stewardship isn’t just a victory for Native communities; it benefits the environment on a broader scale. Tribal lands are often managed with sustainability in mind, blending traditional ecological knowledge with modern science.
The Yurok Tribe’s work to restore salmon populations in the Klamath River, which runs through southern Oregon and northern California, demonstrates this approach. The tribe spent decades advocating for the removal of dams to revive fish habitats and repair regional biodiversity. The last of four dams is scheduled for removal at the end of 2024.
Researchers spotted the first salmon in 112 years in the Klamath River basin last October.
“The return of our relatives, the c’iyaal’s, is overwhelming for our tribe,” said Klamath Tribes Secretary, using the Klamath-Modoc word for salmon. “This is what our members worked for and believed in for so many decades. The salmon are just like our tribal people, and they know where home is and returned as soon as they were able.”
Trump’s 2016 and 2024 environmental policy plans
FILE – In this Aug. 10, 2005 file photo, tourist Chris Farthing from Suffolks County, England, takes a picture of Anasazi ruins in Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. The preservation and protection of Native American cultural sites would be a priority of U.S. land managers under one of the options up for consideration as they work to amend an outdated guide for management of oil and gas drilling across a sprawling area of northwestern New Mexico. (AP Photo/Jeff Geissler, File)AP
These practices contrast sharply with the fossil fuel industries likely to dominate federal land policy under a Trump administration. Trump has made no secret of his plans to prioritize oil, gas, and mining projects that, research shows, lead to long-term ecological harm, from polluted waterways to destruction of habitats.
For clues on what effect Trump will have on the Native American community in his second term, just look at his first. Between 2016 and 2020, Trump oversaw sweeping changes to federal land management policies, many of which disproportionately affected Native American lands.
Leadership roles within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior were filled by individuals who bypassed Congressional vetting. Trump ended the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference, a hallmark of Obama’s administration for eight years.
Early in his presidency, Trump issued executive orders and memorandums rolling back critical public lands and wildlife protections. His America First energy agenda fast-tracked contentious projects like the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, both of which faced fierce and prolonged resistance from Native communities and their supporters. Additionally, Trump slashed the Bears Ears National Monument—an Indigenous-driven initiative—by 85%, undermining its status as a landmark in collaborative land stewardship.
While Native American issues were not a prominent feature of Trump’s 2024 campaign, his broader policy priorities pose significant risks. These include the potential repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906, a cornerstone of American conservation law used to establish national monuments, many protecting sacred Indigenous sites.
Project 2025, which Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from, explicitly calls for expanded oil and gas development on public lands. These policies could have catastrophic consequences for areas like the Chaco Cultural Historic National Park in New Mexico, where tribal leaders have fought for decades to prevent oil and gas leasing within a 10-mile radius of the park. President Joe Biden ordered a 20-year ban on drilling around the park in 2023 and restricted oil production in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, home to the Gwich’in people.
These protections are fragile. Trump could revoke past executive orders, and federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the Environmental Protection Agency face significant protection rollbacks under a Trump administration guided by Project 2025.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, one of the wealthiest politicians in the country, could play a central role in Trump’s policy overhaul if confirmed as the next Interior Secretary. As governor, Burgum championed strong pro-fossil fuel policies and 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.
Burgum would also lead a new energy council seeking to establish U.S. “energy dominance” worldwide, including managing Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leases, which slowed considerably under Biden.
“He’s long advocated for rolling back critical environmental safeguards to let polluters profit,” the Sierra Club said on Nov. 15. “Doug Burgum’s ties to the fossil fuel industry run deep and, if confirmed to this position, he will surely continue Donald Trump’s efforts to sell out our public lands to his polluter pals. Our lands are our nation’s greatest treasure, and the Interior Department is charged with their protection.”
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