Book Review of Beth Rose Middleton's Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation

Beth Rose Middleton provides a substantial review of a recent but burgeoning practice among American Indian tribes in the lower 48 states. This growing practice involves establishing tribal partnerships with, or creation of their own land trusts to secure conservation and/or cultural easements over lands that hold great significance to tribes, but that lie outside of reservation boundaries. As Middleton points out, this process of reclamation is not only changing the way in which tribes seek partnerships with non-native entities, it is also changing the policies and practices of non-Indian land conservancies. By using land trusts and easements, tribes protect and gain access to traditional resources and places, private land owners secure tax benefits and good will, and conservation organizations learn new methods of protecting natural resources.

Middleton organizes her book into three main sections and draws upon fourteen different case studies. The first section describes Native American Land Conservation Organizations. Although the land trusts are Native-owned, Middleton emphasizes the partnerships that tribes entered into with non-Native entities and the variety of approaches to Native conservation programs. Her next section, Collaborations Between Tribes and Land Trusts, explores the relationship between federally recognized and unrecognized tribes, and non-Native land trusts. In her final section, Tribes and NRCS Conservation Tools, Middleton illustrates how tribes can work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to create conservation districts to accomplish both tribal and conservation purposes. In her final chapter, Middleton refers to the fourteen case studies, but importantly outlines the conceptual tools and strategies participants used to meet their goals. While the case studies provide examples, it is this last chapter that presents a framework.

The book addresses a persistent problem for Indian nations, an injustice that has defied resolution in the courts. Indian tribes have been dispossessed of their lands over the last several centuries. The methods by which Indian lands have been taken are varied, and include treaties, allotments and the imposition of property taxes on a people unable to pay them, outright violation of federal laws, fraud, and force. Tribes were forcibly relocated huge distances from their ancestral lands. In consequence of this history, many Indian nations are left with a reservation that is completely cut off from, or otherwise is but a small piece of ancestral territory. These nations have spiritual and cultural ties and obligations to places outside their own reservation. Though the federal courts for a recent period of a few decades were open to tribes seeking a remedy, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively closed those doors. Traditional legal remedies that are available to other citizens who have suffered property loss, are not available to the First Nations for the loss of their lands. Dr. Middleton describes an incremental step toward a solution for Indian communities. Cultural and conservation easements do not fully satisfy, however. An easement does provide a tribe with the degree of authority over its land that is due a self-governing nation. It is a small but significant step in the right direction.

For the reader interested in trying to apply the concept, the use of the law of real property to solve problems of Indian cultural site protection and access, the numerous examples display a wealth of ideas, organizational structures, and approaches. The differences among the fourteen examples are sometimes subtle. The variety though, increases the likelihood that some among these tools may be useful to tribal communities and conservation organizations. Her conclusion takes a thematic approach to the case studies and weaves them together with lucidity.

The strengths of this monograph are too many to list, but the highlights are clear. The narrative focuses on the tribal ambitions and cultural concerns that benefit from creating easements. Trust in the Land is an important tool for environmental justice lawyers and may lead to greater understanding between the land conservation community and tribal communities, and better results for both. It is, as well, emblematic of a theme of a former professor of Dr. Middleton's, Philip Frickey (Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall), University of California at Berkeley). Professor Frickey in his last years, advocated that scholars should write not for themselves and their colleagues, but for the benefit of the Indian communities they studied. This book is a wonderful example of the true value that scholars can bring to Indian communities: intelligence, education, clear thinking (in Middleton's case), and creative but practical approaches to difficult and serious problems for Indian people.

Trust in the Land is well written, accessible, usable, and scholarly. It demonstrates the creative ways tribal communities and their allies are employing common property law principals for their own purposes. This is a necessary purchase for the non-profit, environmental lawyer and tribal environmental resources management office. Middleton's scholarship should catapult the movement toward increased use of easements by tribes and land trusts working in collaboration.