The state of Washington owns land that rightfully belongs to the Yakama Nation. A treaty map that showed what land should be included in the Yakama reservation was lost for nearly 75 years since it was filed under “M” for Montana. Because the land ownership was long established and is being used as a revenue source for the state, Washington will likely want compensation before returning it. Maria Parazo Rose is a freelance journalist who covered this story for Grist. She joins us with details.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to the enormous ongoing effects of a very old filing error. More than 150 years ago, a federal clerk misfiled a map showing the rightful boundaries of the Yakama Nation Reservation. That led federal authorities to give big chunks of Tribal land to the state, which held on to some of it, and gave some to non-Tribal people. That injustice persists to this day. 90,000 acres that should be Tribally-held remain in state or private hands. So how exactly did this happen and what would it take to return that land?
Maria Parazo Rose is a freelance journalist who covered this story for the online news site, Grist. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Maria Parazo Rose: Happy to be here.
Miller: The center of the story is that the state of Washington had this map. The federal government then mislaid it, from a nearly 170-year-old treaty with the Yakama Nation, leading to what we’ll talk about. But before we get to that, can you first tell us about the circumstances under which that 1855 treaty was signed in the first place?
Parazo Rose: Sure. The Treaty of 1855 was an agreement between the U.S. and 14 Tribal nations and bands in the Pacific Northwest, that was really a forced situation. Yakama Chief Kamiakin, who was considered to be the leader of these 14 different bands, was told that his options were to sign the treaty or to “walk knee deep in the blood of his people.” So, it was a treaty, but certainly not one under peaceful conditions.
Miller: OK, this treaty was signed under duress, you could say politely. And then it wasn’t even honored. What happened to one of the key maps that came from it?
Parazo Rose: The map was showing where the Yakama Reservation was going to be. In signing the treaty, the Yakama ceded 10 million acres of their ancestral homelands and were then confined to this reservation about one-tenth of that area. That map was lost to the annals of history quickly after that treaty was signed, and it was later found in the 1930s, misfiled under “M” for Montana instead of “W” for Washington.
Miller: How did that mislaid map lead to lands being taken by the state?
Parazo Rose: When the map disappeared, other maps were produced as a result of additional surveys, trying to recreate what those boundaries were. Those resulting maps created boundary lines that were much smaller than the initial extent. As that was happening, those maps were used in reference for this document called an enabling act, specifically the 1889 Enabling Act, which is the legislative document that turns a territory into a state.
In that document, the federal government gives these parcels of land, called “state trust lands,” to states. States can use these lands, to lease them out and generate money, or sell them and then use the profit to help build up all these different kinds of state institutions, whether that’s hospitals, prisons or schools. Because the enabling act was referencing these incorrect maps, it allocated land that was supposed to be inside the reservation boundaries to the state because it was using these incorrect maps.
Miller: I should say, this is one of those stories that really benefits from visual aids, visual understanding. On your story site at the Grist, there are really well done, dynamic maps. So you can see how the reservation was carved away, given away, through this sloppiness or malfeasance. So I really recommend folks, and there’s a link to your story on our website.
What are these 90,000 acres now?
Parazo Rose: These 90,000 acres refer to 90,000 surface and subsurface acres of state trust lands within the reservation. I guess it’s important to make that distinction of surface and subsurface acres, because the rights to mineral resources or other subsurface materials are distinct from surface.
These state trust land acres are concentrated in two main areas of the Yakama Reservation. One section is Tract D, which is the southwest corner of the reservation. And the other is called Tract C, which is along the northern border of the reservation. These are not the only holdings that the state of Washington has within the reservation, but this particular kind of landholding state trust land were the ones that were granted in the enabling act and never supposed to be within the reservation.
Miller: What did you learn about some of the differences in the way the tribe and the state manage their respective tracts of land?
Parazo Rose: Based on some of the conversations I’ve had with different folks, but especially with Phil Rigdon, who is the superintendent of the Department of Natural Resources for the Yakama Nation – he was describing that when it comes to forest management, Washington’s Department of Natural Resources is certainly much better than private industry and how they manage. They’re not clear cutting in the way that private private industry is, nearly to the same extent at all.
That being said, the way the tribe manages land is different from the state, in that the tribe is not managing land to generate a bunch of profit or to generate a bunch of revenue. And what I mean by that is, Washington is managing these trust lands ultimately under the responsibility of generating as much profit as possible for these state institutions. So they manage it well because they have to continue relying on this resource into the future. But ultimately, it’s still trying to generate money.
The tribe, on the other hand, really follows land management practices that are meant to prioritize the health of the forest. So they do log, of course, but it’s always done in accordance with what is best for that ecosystem and with the priority of forest health.
Miller: Given that this land was mistakenly taken, that it rightfully belongs, based on a treaty which reigns supreme above all these other laws, why can’t the state just give it back?
Parazo Rose: Well, technically, the state could give it back, but really will not do so unless it generates profit from that process of getting rid of land. So the state is mandated, basically, to not lose money on these trust lands. Now that these trust lands are within the state’s possession, they’re not incentivized to give it back unless they get some kind of compensation for it in the first place.
Miller: Where might that compensation come from, and how much money are we actually talking about?
Parazo Rose: So far, in Washington state, there’s two main channels, which actually are being applied to Tract C and Tract D in different ways. Washington has this unique program that is called the Trust Land Transfer Program. And what that does is, through the Department of Natural Resources, entities can apply to have state trust lands transferred out of the Department of Natural Resources and to another entity – say, for example, a tribe. The Department of Natural Resources will then apply to the state legislature for funding to then allow the Department to purchase new land that will help them keep that land portfolio, and essentially the money that they’ll make, whole.
The Department of Natural Resources can apply up to $30 million in funding every two years to replace trust lands. So that’s what they’re doing in Tract C. The Department of Natural Resources is asking the state legislature for $15 million in exchange for 9,000 to 10,000 surface acres in Tract C ...
Miller: And the other way for the other tract?
Parazo Rose: The other way is direct transfer. But the difference with Tract D is that those lands are so profitable, they’re not eligible for this Trust Land Transfer Program. So the federal government is having to step in and try and negotiate that with them, because the state legislature can’t afford to pay for that exchange with the Tract D lands.
Miller: How likely does it seem that these transfers will actually happen?
Parazo Rose: When I spoke with the commissioner for public lands of Washington, she seemed really confident that it will happen, that the Tract C trust land transfer will happen. And folks from the tribe, when I spoke with them, they’re all very hopeful too. I think it’s just one of those cases where it seems likely and it seems promising, but it’s kind of a “you’ll believe it when you see it” situation.
Miller: What kind of precedent might that set, if the state did transfer this land back to the Yakama Nation?
Parazo Rose: It’s an interesting question because, either way, if the land is transferred back to the tribe, that is in the interest of the tribe, and they want that. But I suppose when I was reporting on this story, it’s important to remember that, while this issue of state trust lands on the Yakama Reservation is unique in how complicated it is, there are 78 other reservations across the country that also have trust lands within their reservation boundaries. So how it’s solved here, really can help other tribes imagine the way it might be done for them.
The way I’ve been thinking about it is that this is a question about, when justice is being applied, who is being prioritized? Is it the party that has been harmed, or is it the party that’s committed the harm in the first place? I have a very imperfect analogy, but one that I think helps drive the point home – when you think about emancipation in the Caribbean, slave owners were compensated by the government for the loss of their workforce, essentially. They received financial payments in exchange for freeing slaves. In this case, as I was reporting it, the land was never meant to be the state’s. And yet, in fixing this problem, the state still stands to benefit from the situation.
Miller: Maria Parazo Rose, thanks very much.
Parazo Rose: Thank you.
Miller: Maria Parazo Rose is a freelance journalist who covered this story for the online news site, Grist.
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