Patchak Patch

About the Event:

During the mid-year conference of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in Reno. Nevada, the Department of the Interior will be hosting sessions on two topics to obtain your and other tribal leaders' input. We hope that you will be able to join senior officials from the Department of the Interior (Department) and me to discuss contract support costs funding practices and regulations governing decisions to acquire land in trust. While we were unable to provide a full 30-days advance notice of these sessions. we have purposefully scheduled the consultation sessions to accommodate the schedules of tribal leaders who will attend the NCAl conference.

 At the Patchak Patch session, we will discuss potential revisions to a section of the regulations addressing decisions by the Secretary to approve or deny applications to acquire land in trust.

You may be familiar with the U,S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Palchak easel, finding that the Quiet Title Act did not preclude a neighbor of the tribe's land from challenging the Department's decision to take the land into trust. The revisions to the regulations would address this decision by ensuring that the Department acquires title in trust status as promptly as possible following our decision to acquire land into trust. The revisions would also establish notice requirements to ensure that the statute of limitations begins running for all potential challengers as soon as possible. These and other provisions are also intended to strengthen the case for requiring parties who oppose a Bureau of Indian Affairs land acquisition decision to exhaust administrative remedies and prevent such parties from challenging the trust acquisition decision if they fail to exhaust administrative remedies in a timely manner. Together, these revisions should add more certainty to trust acquisitions, allowing tribes to put their newly acquired trust land to productive
use as soon as possible.

Related Documents:
NCAI Consultation Sessions 4 June 2013.pdf