On April 13, 2011 the Yurok Tribe finalized the purchase of 22,237 acres of land from Green Diamond Resource Company in Humboldt County, California. The land, part of the Yurok’s aboriginal territory, will be sustainably managed for clean water and forest health.
"The Tribe has long sought the return of ancestral land to create a salmon sanctuary and restore tribal cultural management practices, which benefit fish, wildlife and the ecosystem as a whole,” Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas O’Rourke said.
The 1st Tribal Land Staff National Conference was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 18th – 20th. The conference, the first ever exclusively to convene tribal land staff, was a huge success drawing over 100 participants from across Indian Country. Indian Land Tenure Foundation received a grant from the USDA, Office of Risk Management to host the conference.
Macalester College GIS Project Enlightens Community
In a unique collaboration between Macalester College Indian Land Tenure Foundation and the Community Affairs Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 21 geography students had the opportunity to research, map and analyze land tenure patterns on eight Minnesota Indian reservations.
In 2008, Indian Land Tenure Foundation funded the adaptation of ILTF’s K-12 curriculum, Lessons of Our Land, to reflect Montana tribal histories and cultures and to implement the curriculum in classrooms state-wide.
Through an innovative project funded in part by ILTF, Pine Ridge landowners are learning more about the lands they own and about how they can use these lands to benefit themselves and their communities.
The Snoqualmie, the People of the Moon, have been slowly but steadily reclaiming their homelands over the past half century. Their story, one of tragic loss and a hard fought recovery, represents one of the greatest comebacks in Indian Country.
In late 2008, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians recovered 24 acres of their homelands on the Oregon coast, including Gregory Point and Chief's Island, which contain the site of a historic village and a tribal cemetery.
