Indian Issues: GAO's Analysis of Land Ownership at 12 Reservations.
Abstract
The General Accounting Office (GAO) discusses land ownership at 12 Indian reservations. For these reservations, the report describes (1) the ownership of Indian land, (2) the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA's) workload in maintaining ownership records, and (3) the Indian Land Consolidation Act's effect on multiple ownership of land tracts by small ownership interests, referred to as fractionation. GAO also discusses its use of BIA's computerized land records data base to develop the information contained in this report. In summary, it was found that -- Over half of the 83,000 land tracts at the 12 reservations had only one owner, either the tribe or an Indian individual. -- Ownership of about 20 percent of the tracts was fractionated to the point where at least one Indian individual had an interest of 2 percent or less and, in extreme cases, hundreds of owners had ownership interests of 2 percent or less. -- For the 12 reservations, about 60 percent of the 1 million ownership records maintained by BIA represented ownership interests of 2 percent or less that were held by Indian individuals. -- While the Indian Land Consolidation Act had resulted in some small ownership interests being transferred to tribes, the number of small interests held by Indian individuals had more than doubled since the act was passed in 1983. To develop the above information, we uploaded data from BIA's Land Records Information System to a mainframe computer and used computer software programs to produce the charts and tables in the report. (KAR) P. 2
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 02, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA298405
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office