Biden solicitor swings mineral rights title back to tribes

The Associated Press ^ | February 4, 2022 | By DAVE KOLPACK

[Oldeconomybuyer]

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The interior solicitor in the Biden administration said in an opinion released Friday that the mineral rights under the original Missouri River riverbed belong to a North Dakota tribal nation.

The 68-page memorandum posted by the U.S. Department of Interior is contrary to a May 2020 Trump administration opinion concluding that the state is legal owner of submerged lands beneath the river where it flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation had sued over that memo, which rolled back an Obama administration opinion favoring the nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes.

At stake is an estimated $100 million in unpaid royalties and future payments certain to come from oil drilling beneath the river, which was dammed by the federal government in the 1950s. That flooded more than a tenth of the 1,500-square-mile (3,885-square-kilometer) Fort Berthold Reservation to create Lake Sakakawea.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Hunter must be in North Dakota working for the Big Guy.

[wildcard_redneck]

I don’t know. I kind of agree with the ruling. Reservations are sovereign nations and you would think that any river that runs through a reservation is part of their sovereign nation.

Conversely allowing Indian casinos on non-tribal lands while forbidding any other Americans to do so as well is patently unconstitutional.

[antidemoncrat]

Just another inept Biden administration “expert at nothing” helping to uundermine our Constitutional Republic.

[G Larry]

I say we give California back to Mexico.

GOP would then control the House and Senate.

The quality of life would improve without Gavin in charge.

It would provide a new array of places to vacation in Mexico.....

[tiki]

The river doesn’t belong to them.

[tiki]

I just read it more closely and it sounds like it’s a river bed not not an actual river.

[wildcard_redneck]

"The river doesn’t belong to them."

The entire river doesn't belong to them but the river portion that is in their reservations certainly does.

[NWFree]

Everybody’s got opinions but nobody’s got the answers 🤪

[Ikeon]

For everone, What if they decide to put a rendering plant on the river and start dumping the entails into the river?

[FLT-bird]

Just another thing to be reversed on day one of Trump’s 2nd term.

[Flaming Conservative]

Big deal. Biden isn’t letting any oil out, so no income from it.

[sergeantdave]

“The entire river doesn’t belong to them but the river portion that is in their reservations certainly does.”

I can tell that you’ve never owned land with water running thru that land.

[piasa]

It has a dam...

[skepsel]

What’s an “en” and can you make a soup from the tails?

[Ikeon]

I missed an “r” - entrails, look it up

[skepsel]

Never mind Francis.

It was a joke, the alternative involved a jest about property rights and inheritances.

[Glad2bnuts]

We as Americans are Sovereign citizens, why does the government control the land that the sovereigns own?

Sovereign is a term meaning “from whence the power flows”. That is us, so why do our elected act like they are the Sovereigns instead of the servants? We need to flip that.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Berosus]

I thought the Mandan tribe was extinct. Didn’t a smallpox epidemic kill them off in the 1830s?

[SunkenCiv]

[two months later] Sure, but maybe these folks have decided to *identify* themselves as Mandan.