A patchwork of policies: Why is there so much land in Indian Country, yet so few homes?

BLACKFEET RESERVATION — The painting hangs on a wall in Blackfeet Community College President Brad Hall’s house.

“I like it,” said Hall’s father, Ted, a retired Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent. “Because I like the truth.”

“Allotment Act,” by Blackfeet artist Wilbur Blackweasel, depicts a Native couple driving a horse-drawn cart through an open landscape. In the ground in front of them is a metal stake marking their assigned parcel.

The General Allotment Act of 1887 (also called the Dawes Act ) authorized the president of the United States to divvy reservation land into allotments for distribution to individual tribal members. Tribal land that was not allotted was deemed “surplus” and opened to non-Native settlement. Allotment supporters argued that private ownership and agric