Consolidation and land use changes on Native American reservations: an analysis of the land buy-back program for tribal nations

Abstract

Native American land has experienced the proliferation of undivided ownership interests through a process known as fractionation, a consequence of generations of Federal Indian policy. From 2012 to 2022, the federal government's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (LBBP) spent $1.9 billion consolidating fractional interests into tribal ownership across 47 reservations, representing the largest federal land reconsolidation effort in U.S. history. This analysis uses a triple-difference design to compare the change in land use within treated reservations with reservations identified for participation but not consolidated before the program expiration, as well as comparing with their five-mile surrounding border rings. This analysis finds no statistically significant effect of the program on intensive-margin crop changes or broad extensive-margin land cover outcomes. These results are consistent with a theoretical framework in which consolidation into tribal ownership replaces the coordination failures of fractionated ownership with a principal- agent problem. The findings suggest that centralized consolidation programs such as the LBBP are insufficient on their own to generate systematic changes in reservation agricultural outcomes, and that effective reform will require changes to the institutional environment governing land use after consolidation occurs.