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Tribes across the country continue to feel the adverse impact of the federal allotment policy, which caused the loss of more than 90 million acres of Indian land. The restoration of a viable land base is important to the governmental, economic and cultural future of the tribes. Our firm has worked with many tribes in connection with a broad range of trust land issues.

Litigation is an important part of our trust land practice. We prepared an amicus brief for tribes in the U.S. Supreme Court in the Oacoma case (U.S. Dep't of Interior v. South Dakota and City of Oacoma, 515 U.S. 919 (1996)), in which we supported Secretary of the Interior's authority to take land into trust in the face of an attack under the non-delegation doctrine. In this connection, we argued that the non-delegation doctrine should not apply at all to trust land acquisitions, since acquiring land is not a lawmaking function. We have litigated other trust land cases (both before the federal courts and administrative appeals within the Interior Department) raising both non-delegation and additional issues, including compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. We have also represented tribes with trust land issues arising under section 20 of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, including whether a particular site is a part of a "restoration of lands" for a restored tribe.

The firm took a leadership role for tribes when the Interior Department was considering new regulations on the process for taking land into trust under 25 C.F.R. Part 151. Our efforts in that regard focused on providing adequate standards for trust land acquisitions, developing meaningful time requirements for Interior decisions on trust land applications, and ensuring proper consideration by Interior of the needs of tribes to regain their trust land base.

Because trust land applications are often challenged in court, we have worked with tribes at the preparation stage for their applications. In this regard, we have assisted tribes on a wide range of matters to ensure that the record before the Department of the Interior is sufficient to withstand court review.

Finally, while most trust land acquisitions arise from administrative action, we have also worked with tribes to have lands taken into trust directly through legislation. For example, we represented a tribe in securing enactment of legislation restoring to tribal trust ownership, 1,200 acres of culturally significant lands in the Kickapoo Valley in Wisconsin.