David Treuer wrote an article for the Atlantic, Return the National Parks to the Tribes, published in May 2021. Treuer grew up on the Leech Lake Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota; his mother was a tribal official. In the article he recounts the sad displacement of the Miwok from Yosemite, the Shoshone from Yellowstone, the Blackfeet from Glacier, the Havasupai from the Grand Canyon, the Ojibwe from the Apostle Islands, and others. His central argument is
For Native Americans, there can be no better remedy for the theft of land than land.
That's the argument the Prairie Band makes today: they claim that Shab-eh-nay's land was stolen from him, and that they deserve that it be returned.
Now, there are quite a number of partnerships between tribes and the National Park Service, for example, the Navajo at Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. Those partnerships have worked quite well, but ownership still resides in the US government. Treuer argues that ownership itself should be turned over to the tribes.
In other work we've established that the Prairie Band claim about Shabbona Lake State Park has no historical justification: there was never a reservation, and the land in question was in fact taken from the new prospective owners after Shab-eh-nay tried to sell it.
But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that Treuer's land-theft claims have greater legitimacy in other cases, or perhaps in a broader sense. At the time of the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, in which Shab-eh-nay was granted the continued use of some land near present-day Shabbona, the US Army respected native tribes as a serious foe. While there are exceptions, most treaties of that era were negotiated peacefully with considerable give-and-take, and with financial concessions from the United States side. Yes, many of the Potawatomi and Chippewa did not want to leave Illinois, but they knew quite well from past skirmishes that the writing was on the wall. The truly predatory treaty negotiations were mostly after the Civil War, when the US side regarded military victory as inevitable and, frankly, relatively inexpensive. Treuer is quite right that the tribes he mentions who lost their homes in what are now National Parks did so at tremendous cost.
So returning National Park land to various tribes might have at least some legitimacy, in terms of justice.
Except.
The Federal government manages our national parks for the public benefit, at considerable cost. These are national treasures that belong to all of us. Under tribal ownership, we would simply lose the National Parks, at least as they exist today; the tribes won't be able to afford to manage the parks the same way the National Park Service does. The Federal government manages our national parks at a loss, for our collective benefit, and that policy would not continue. Tribal governments will inevitably have other, competing goals. If we want to lobby for a new trail, or a new campground, or an extended winter season, we can do that today. But that will be much harder when dealing with a government we don't have representation in.
Second, the tribes are going to want complete autonomy in how they manage the parks (as does the Prairie Band if they get Shabbona Lake). And they are going to have to make the parks pay their way; the idea that the tribes will set aside their financial needs -- which in some cases are still quite desperate -- to continue to cater to the American public is bunkum. Maybe we will simply be saddled with vastly higher admission fees, but attempts to monetize the former parks will much more likely lead to large-scale development. Perhaps condos along Yosemite's Tuolumne river, or even drilled into the cliff face on Half Dome. Or maybe mining will bring in the biggest return. For Shabbona Lake, Prairie Band control is quite likely to lead to extensive development. That might take the form of lakefront housing lots, or perhaps a large casino/entertainment complex. But the park won't stay a park.
And there are no comparable places at which we can create replacement parks. The western national parks generally involve unique, irreplaceable geological or botanical features. Shabbona Lake represents a rare "prairie grove". It is a place that was wetter than the surrounding prairie -- because it lies on a watershed between two rivers -- and so a hardwood forest could develop there despite the recurring prairie fires.
Finally, why just the parks? Land claims will not stop there. Ultimately, essentially all of the United States is on the table if all past treaties are revisited because the tribes involved were coerced. In the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, the Potawatomi, Chippewa and Ottowa traded five million acres in Illinois for five million acres in the Kansas Territory. (Much of that five million acres in Kansas is now gone, but that is another story.) But the Kansas acreage was much drier, and the new land was not the same. Should the treaty -- and restored Native title to all of northern Illinois -- be up for renegotiation because of that? Furthermore, at the time of the treaty negotiation there were subtle but very clear threats of eventual force, if the tribes did not sign. And this was one of the fairer treaties. For all the arguments against turning national parks over to various tribes, even though they are treasured by many Americans, it would certainly be even harder to give away existing private property. Turning over the parks would set a terrible precedent for just that.
It is not always possible to right ancient wrongs by transferring land ownership. Not here. Not in the Mideast. Not in the former Soviet bloc, even ignoring Ukraine. Not in China. The Anasazi built huge adobe structures in Arizona, but disappeared after 1200 AD. If their descendants can even be found, what claims might they make? These kinds of questions are intractable. There is plenty of room for the US as a country to improve its treatment of the land's pre-colonial inhabitants without dissolving more parks. Our parks should not be used as poker chips in a game of reparations.
Peter
Dordal
DeKalb County Taxpayers Against the Casino