{"id":6042,"date":"2022-07-13T19:18:32","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T19:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/?p=6042"},"modified":"2022-07-13T19:18:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T19:18:32","slug":"emmett-clinic-and-native-american-rights-fund-publish-guidebook-for-alaska-natives-to-put-land-in-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/2022\/07\/13\/emmett-clinic-and-native-american-rights-fund-publish-guidebook-for-alaska-natives-to-put-land-in-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmett Clinic and Native American Rights Fund Publish Guidebook for Alaska Natives to Put Land in Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 13, 2022\u2014Today, the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic and Native American Rights Fund (\u201cNARF\u201d) published Putting Land in Trust: A Guidebook for Alaska Native Tribes and Individuals<\/a><\/em>, which informs and guides Alaska Natives about the process of applying to have their privately held land converted to land held in trust for them by the United States.\u00a0 This \u201cfee-to-trust\u201d or \u201cland into trust\u201d process gives tribal members much greater sovereignty and control over land as compared to land they hold privately.\u00a0 (\u201cFee\u201d refers to the legal concept of \u201cfee simple\u201d land\u2014a property law term referring to what people typically think of as complete ownership of land.)<\/p>\n

Congress established the trust lands acquisition process in 1934 and applied it to Alaska in 1936.\u00a0 However, the process has not, in fact, been available to Alaska Natives since around 1980, when the U.S. Department of Interior (\u201cDOI\u201d) construed relevant federal law to exclude Alaska from trust lands acquisition eligibility.\u00a0 After years of regulatory back and forth, Alaska Natives may now again apply to have their lands held in trust.<\/p>\n

The Clinic and NARF, therefore, collaborated to write the Guidebook<\/em> to assist Alaska Native tribes and individuals in preparing fee-to-trust applications.\u00a0 The Guidebook <\/em>explains the relevant statutes and regulations, the benefits and possible drawbacks of having land held in trust, and the details of the application process.<\/p>\n

NARF has provided legal assistance to Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide who might otherwise have gone without adequate representation. \u00a0NARF has successfully asserted and defended the most important rights of Indians and tribes in hundreds of major cases, and has achieved significant results in such critical areas as tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, natural resource protection, and Indian education. \u00a0NARF is a non-profit 501c(3) organization that focuses on applying existing laws and treaties to guarantee that national and state governments live up to their legal obligations.<\/p>\n

The Guidebook<\/em> was written by Anna Todd (JD \u201923), in collaboration with Clinical Fellow Tommy Landers, and Matthew Newman, a Senior Staff Attorney at NARF.\u00a0 The Guidebook is available here:\u00a0 Putting Land in Trust: A Guidebook for Alaska Native Tribes and Individuals<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 13, 2022\u2014Today, the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic and Native American Rights Fund (\u201cNARF\u201d) published Putting Land in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinic-publications","category-news","post-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}