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Fort Smith, AR
June 17, 2025 5:30 a.m.
Do Not Trust Trust Land
Trust Land is land owned by the United States government. It can be used by Indian Tribes, but they will never own it.
Lands are held in Trust for Indians because Indians are “mentally incompetent” to handle their legal affairs. This superiority of intellectual acumen for White Europeans goes back to the 1400s Doctrine of Discovery, in which the Papal Bull states that those of darker skin and not Christianized are mentally incompetent and have no means of acquiring salvation because they have no ability for mental assent to the divine.
When the United States began dealing with Indians, it was determined that they could not understand Capitalism and business contracts. Therefore, the United States determined to hold lands and money in Trust because the Indians were too “simple minded” to manage their lands and money. The Indians were “wards of the state” or “domestic dependents” of the United States government.
The Marshall Court’s Trilogy of cases determining that the Doctrine of Discovery indeed applied to Indians in the United States has enshrined this genocidal policy in place since the 1830s. The Trust policy became even more draconian during Removal. Original Nations people were removed from their homelands and placed on lands that the United States did not have a use. The U.S. moved the Original Nations people onto Trust Lands owned by the United States and called these lands “Reservations.”
Trust Land or Reservations do not belong to the Tribes of Original Nations people who live on them. The United States allows the Indians to live on the lands, make improvements to the lands, and build infrastructure. All of these improvements are for the United States, not the Tribes. The Indians work and care for the land that does not belong to them. This is eerily familiar to the plantation slave model of life in the Old South.
The Chickamauga Nation knows all too well the difference between Trust Land, Reservation Land, and Fee Simple Title Land. We see the difference is that we never owned the lands because the United States took ours and illegally, in violation of Treaties, and gave it to others. In the 1817 Treaty, the Lands in Arkansas were to be in Fee Simple Title, but the title was refused to be given. In the 1828, 1833, and 1835 Treaties, the lands in Indian Territory were to be in Fee Simple Title, and in 1838, the Land Patent for 14,374,135 and 14/100th acres was given to The Chickamauga Nation, only to have the Land Patent stolen by the U.S. Military and fraudulently given to illegal, immigrant invaders who committed genocide against the Chickamauga beginning on June 22, 1839 on Chickamauga land.
Today, the U.S. government wants Original Nations people to buy back their lands in Fee Simple Title or have communities give lands to Tribes in Fee Simple Title and have the Tribes turn around and give the lands to the U.S. to be held in Trust for them.
How can an Original Nations Tribe Trust Trust Land? We cannot. Trust Land is a SCAM perpetrated by the United States against Original Nations people to keep them down on the reservation and working to improve the lands of the United States, not the Tribe.
The United States gives Tribes billions of dollars annually to improve reservation lands. These improvements are infrastructure improvements for the lands owned by the United States, not the Tribes. One day, Tribes will stand up and say, “NO MORE!”
Until that day, Tribes must reclaim their lands in Fee Simple Title and govern their own lands themselves.