Tribes call on Trump to ‘do right for Indian country,’ return federal land within Wind River Reservation’s bounds

This story was originally published by WyoFile

Mike Koshmrl
WyoFile

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes have reignited their long-stalled effort to repatriate more than 100 square miles of federal government property within the Wind River Indian Reservation. 

Land the tribes are seeking has been designated as excess and unnecessary to the water infrastructure that took it out of tribal hands.

Mostly arid Bureau of Reclamation property west of Boysen Reservoir, the region in question is known as Muddy Ridge — and there’s a decades-long history of the tribes attempting to reacquire the area and classify it instead as tribal lands. Over the course of the summer, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes and their joint Wind River Inter-Tribal Council have each sent the Trump administration’s Interior Department letters urging the federal government to move on the conveyance process. 

“It has been the Wind River Tribes’ view for eighty years that these lands, which were part of the 1868 Treaty, should be returned to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes as part of the Wind River Indian Reservation,” states a July 15 letter from the Eastern Shoshone Business Council.

The letter was addressed to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. It details tribes’ unsuccessful efforts to acquire the land during the Biden administration, when Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, helmed Interior. 

“The Department and its Bureaus appeared uncommitted to upholding the federal trust responsibility to the Tribes,” the Eastern Shoshone letter states. “Now, under the Trump administration, the Department of Interior can bring closure to an eighty-year-long effort by the Tribes and Repatriate our ancestral lands within the Reservation boundary. The Trump administration can do right for Indian country.” 

Although there were no decisions made during the Biden administration, there were administrative steps that moved the Bureau of Reclamation in the direction of disposing of its excess property. The tribes’ interest spurred the reignited disposal process, Bureau of Reclamation Wyoming Area Manager Lyle Myler said. 

“Our regional director, working with the BLM state director, reinvigorated this process,” Myler said. 

Back in the 1990s, Myler explained, some 56,000 acres of agency land in the area were identified as “not needed for project purposes.” During that era, the agency submitted a “notice of intent to relinquish the land,” but subsequently the effort “languished,” he said. 

After the tribes kicked the process back into gear in 2021, the Bureau of Land Management — an Interior sibling agency to Bureau of Reclamation engaged in the disposal process — started mapping and inventorying the land at issue.  

“We’ve identified another approximately 10,000 acres that will be included in the request for revocation or relinquishment,” Myler said. 

The redefined legal descriptions for those acres were recently published in the Federal Register, he said, and the total acreage now being examined is roughly 66,000 acres.

The tribes, meanwhile, are urging the federal government to repatriate “roughly 69,000 acres,” according to the letters sent to Burgum. Additionally, the Eastern Shoshone letter asks the federal government to “commit to discussing the repatriation of an additional 35,000 acres of disputed excess lands.” 

According to the Eastern Shoshone’s letter, there is historic precedent for returning lands within the reservation that were taken from the tribes, but never developed. Some 70,000 acres were restored in 1953 near Boysen Reservoir and another 120 acres near Thermopolis were returned to the tribes in 1988, the letter states. 

Today, updated maps and the precise accounting of the “excess” land that’s being examined for disposal is not yet publicly available. The majority of the property is located between Fivemile and Muddy creeks in the area known as Muddy Ridge, Myler said, but there are also “spatterings” of non-contiguous parcels. A photo of a map sent to WyoFile shows that some of the smaller tracts are located to the south, nearer to Shoshoni and Riverton. 

Although the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Sand Mesa Wildlife Habitat Management Area is located on Bureau of Reclamation property and borders excess lands being examined, the state-managed ground is not part of the revocation request, Myler said.  

The next step for the Bureau of Reclamation is to review the updated “packet” that its regional director will send to the Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming director, who is currently Kris Kirby in an acting role. After it is received and reviewed, a Federal Register notice will go out, BLM-Wyoming Senior Advisor Brad Purdy said. 

“There’ll be a press release and everything,” Purdy said. “That’s when we’re going to do the public comment.” 

The timeframe isn’t cemented, but BLM is aiming to publish Muddy Ridge “environmental site assessment” documents in the winter, he said. 

Those documents will not necessarily propose taking a specific action. 

“Folks are looking for, ‘What direction is this taking? What are the possible outcomes?’” Purdy said. “That’s where we’re struggling. I don’t know. We have to do this process first.”

Although tribal interest stimulated the process, it’s not necessarily geared toward conveying the land to the tribes — though that could be the outcome, Purdy said. In the end, one person will make the call about what becomes of the land. 

“The ultimate decision on what happens lies with the [Interior] Secretary [Burgum],” Purdy said. “You’ll get some indication when that environmental site assessment is [completed]. But there’s not going to be … like a preferred alternative in it.”

The Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s letter, which was prepared with support from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, urges Burgum to “immediately repatriate” the lands. There’s “no question” he has the authority, it states. 

“The solution is simple,” the letter reads. “It requires one pen and your signature.” 

The missive cites a 1993 BLM document, “Report on Return of Excess Lands Wind River Reservation, WY,” which includes the statement: “The appropriateness of returning these lands to the Tribes was recognized by the United States as early as 1943.” It also details a Haaland Secretarial Order, 3403, which calls for the Interior Department to: “Identify and support Tribal opportunities to consolidate Tribal homelands and empower Tribal stewardship of those resources.” 

As of Tuesday, the tribes had not yet heard back from Burgum’s Interior Department, according to Wes Martel, a Greater Yellowstone Coalition senior conservation associate who’s been engaged in the issue and formerly served on the Eastern Shoshone Business Council.

But a response is being prepared, Purdy said. “We will send a letter explaining everything out,” he said. 

Meantime, some Eastern Shoshone members who’ve tracked the issue aren’t optimistic that the Trump administration will heed the request. 

“It’s going to be extremely difficult,” said Richard Baldes, a retired biologist who worked on returning the Muddy Ridge lands to the Wind River tribes in the 1990s. 

“It’s more than Muddy Ridge,” Baldes added. “They took a lot of land out of the reservation they were supposed to use for irrigation. Those additional lands that they didn’t use for irrigation were supposed to revert back to the tribes. They never did.”