Let's talk about cattle grazing fees!
Only people who advocate for the private expropriation of public lands have their concerns taken seriously.
I actually have seen tons about this due to a strange assortment of people in Facebook (why not be excited about this, Australian ski instructor living in Japan who I don't actually know!) but it's still not clear at all to me what the controversy is actually about. It's more like THE TRIBES ARE GETTING TOGETHER, which has a nice beginning-of-the-Warriors feel but nothing I've seen linked really explains what the issue is.
It was all over my feeds on several sites, but then dirt and water keywords get not only ecology but a lot of Native news, because a lot of ecological last stands get their legal force from Native rights. In the west, anyway.
Oh, here's something for the lawyers -- I was told recently that it was Nixon who changed US law so that (IIRC) Congress is not allowed to ignore treaties with Native nations at whim. Yesno? Why? Was the environmental effect intentional? In short: was the Weeping Indian ad deeper than it looked?
This has of course also been all over my FB feed for the past few days. (Well, until yesterday, when it was swamped by NPS centennial stuff.) I still haven't clicked through on any of the links so I don't know any details about what's happening.
4.2 That doesn't sound to me like it's the law. Also doesn't sound like the Constitution I'm familiar with: Nixon can't have done anything that binds future Congresses. Congressional power over the domestic dependent nations is still plenary, sfaik.
4.1 Natives often have property rights that extend beyond the property they own (or is held in trust for them). The Hellgate Treaty, by which title to the land I am currently occupying passed to the US, included a provision that reserved to the Salish people their right to fish in accustomed places. In the water rights compact between Montana and the Salish, which is finally before Congress for approval after 30 years of negotiation, this has led to the CSKT having instream flow rights in all the major rivers in the western part of the state, even those that make no contact with the CSKT nation proper.