Biden Team Scraps Trump-Era Opinion That Gave Away Tribal Lands
The Biden administration scrapped a controversial Trump-era legal opinion on Monday that sought to give North Dakota control over a portion of the Missouri River on Native American land.
The withdrawal comes one week after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe of New Mexico, was confirmed as the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Haaland and President Joe Biden have vowed to uphold tribal sovereignty and reverse the Trump administration’s attacks on Indigenous cultural sites.
In May 2020, Daniel Jorjani, then the top lawyer at the Department of the Interior and a former longtime adviser to the fossil fuel moguls Charles and David Koch, issued a memo concluding that the state of North Dakota owns mineral rights beneath the portion of the Missouri River that flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation.
That opinion replaced one from 2017 in which Hilary Tompkins, the interior solicitor under President Barack Obama, determined that the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, had rightful ownership.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/missouri-river-biden-administration-ownership-fort-berthold_n_6058cb80c5b6f12839d65306
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