Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 114 Part 3.djvu/969

 PUBLIC LAW 106-462—NOV. 7, 2000 114 STAT. 1991 Public Law 106-462 106th Congress An Act To reduce the firactionated ownership of Indian lands, and for other purposes. Nov. 7, 2000 [S. 1586] Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, Indian Land o.w<.«r.^^^r - ^wnrn rn^r.^ », Consolidation Act SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. Amendments of This Act may be cited as the "Indian Land Consolidation Act 2000. 25 USC 2201 Amendments of 2000". note TITLE I—INDIAN LAND CONSOLIDATION SEC. 101. FINDINGS. 25 USC 2201 Congress finds that— (1) in the 1800's and early 1900's, the United States sought to assimilate Indian people into the surrounding non-Indian culture by allotting tribal lands to individual members of Indian tribes; (2) as a result of the allotment Acts and related Federal policies, over 90,000,000 acres of land have passed from tribal ownership; (3) many trust allotments were taken out of trust status, often without their owner's consent; (4) without restrictions on alienation, allotment owners were subject to exploitation and their allotments were often sold or disposed of without any tangible or enduring benefit to their owners; (5) the trust periods for trust allotments have been extended indefinitely; (6) because of the inheritance provisions in the original treaties or allotment Acts, the ownership of many of the trust allotments that have remained in trust status has become fractionated into hundreds or thousands of undivided interests, many of which represent 2 percent or less of the total interests; (7) Congress has authorized the acquisition of lands in trust for individual Indians, and many of those lands have also become fractionated by subsequent inheritance; (8) the acquisitions referred to in paragraph (7) continue to be made; (9) the fractional interests described in this section often provide little or no return to the beneficial owners of those interests and the administrative costs borne by the United States for those interests are inordinately high; (10) in Babbitt v. Youpee (117 S Ct. 727 (1997)), the United States Supreme Court found the application of section 207

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