Real Estate & Native Americans

fedorable1 said:

I'm writing a screenplay which features a real estate agent in Minnesota who needs to deal with Native Americans on "unclaimed" public land.

If anyone here has knowledge of real estate or Native American law - especially from MN - please let me know and I'll send you what questions I have.

You can reply here or at [email protected].

~Dale Easterling

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There is no "unclaimed public land" anywhere - if it's public land, some government owns it - feds, state, county or city. What is it doing for your plot?

You could have land that was/was not part of a reservation based on poor surveys, and a court hassle over it. You could have land that was disputably bought by/from the Indians that's being contested.

And the "Native American law" varies from tribe to tribe - what tribe are we talking about?

I'm writing a screenplay which features a real estate agent in Minnesota who needs to deal with Native Americans on "unclaimed" public land.

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This type of land doesn't exist in the US anymore, IIRC. I believe Alaska was the last homesteading type of 'free' land.

However, tribal law does vary as stated above there have been leases for coal mining (not MN, I don't think), oil drilling, copper mining, uranium, etc. These need to be reclaimed when the resource has played out.

In this instance a real estate developer/agent might be interested in tribal land or land adjacent to tribal land. This agent may be trying to negotiate a lease for X number of years and must use tribal authority in negotiations.

Does this help? I recently read a good book on this subject but I believe the tribe was Cheyenne. I don't think this is in MN.

fedorable1 said:

Some modern day examples of Native Americans in recent decades being vacated from previous reservations or N.A. lands would be excellent.

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I doubt you will find an actual situation like that. In fact, the opposite is the rule today, as modern courts are very friendly to tribes challenging the legality of decades old land sales.

You would also have difficulty finding a situation where a real estate agent is involved. Agents, or Realtors, represent buyers and sellers, so a more logical situation would be a real estate developer.