Tribal Lands and Asset Building

This just in from our friend Peter Morris of the National Congress of American Indians:

While the United States faces one of the most significant housing crises in the nation’s history, many forget that Indian housing has been in crisis for generations. This week, the NCAI Policy Research Center (a think tank at the National Congress of American Indians) and First Nations Development Institute (a national Native nonprofit focused on asset-based development in Indian Country) released a report entitled Exercising Sovereignty and Expanding Economic Opportunity Through Tribal Land Management.

The report provides first-of-its-kind analysis of a critical barrier to homeownership on Indian lands. While title reports on non-Indian lands take an average of 24-48 hours, some Native people wait as long as several years for this critical process to conclude so they can purchase a home or start a business.

The data in the report analyzes the success and challenges faced by tribes that have taken responsibility (in whole or in part) for administering the land title process on tribal lands. The report makes concrete recommendations for dealing with this fundamental inequity in the treatment of Native people with regard to a key asset-building opportunity.