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Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller
Dan Kraker and Maja Beckstrom

Returning land to Native Americans

A man stands outside on a snow-covered field.
Robert Larsen, chairman of Lower Sioux Indian Community, stands on the prairie at the Lower Sioux Agency in Morton, Minn. The historic Dakota site was part of a 114-acre parcel that the Minnesota Historical Society officially returned to the tribe in February.
Hannah Yang | MPR News file

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Roughly 50 million acres of land in the United States is considered reservation land — held by the government in trust for Native tribes. That’s about 2 percent of the country, but that’s a lot less than the acreage once set aside for tribes in the late 19th century through treaties. 

Now tribes across the country are trying to reclaim some of those millions of lost acres within their reservation boundaries. 

Guest host Dan Kraker talked about it with Cris Stainbrook of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, former Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa chair Karen Diver and Benjamin Benoit of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.