ND Minerals Belong To Tribes -- Biden Solicitor -- February 4, 2022

Link to AP News:

The interior solicitor in the Biden administration said in an opinion released Friday, February 4, 2022, that the mineral rights under the original Missouri River riverbed belong to a North Dakota tribal nation.

The 68-page memorandum posted by the U.S. Department of Interior is contrary to a May 2020 Trump administration opinion concluding that the state is legal owner of submerged lands beneath the river where it flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation had sued over that memo, which rolled back an Obama administration opinion favoring the nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes.

“My decision today upholds decades of existing precedent holding that the Missouri riverbed belongs to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara (MHA) Nation,” Interior Solicitor Bob Anderson said in a statement. “Today’s action, based on extensive historical and legal review, underscores the Department’s commitment to upholding its trust and treaty obligations in accordance with the law.”

At stake is an estimated $100 million in unpaid royalties and future payments certain to come from oil drilling beneath the river, which was dammed by the federal government in the 1950s. That flooded more than a tenth of the 1,500-square-mile (3,885-square-kilometer) Fort Berthold Reservation to create Lake Sakakawea.

The state has argued it assumed ownership of the riverbed when North Dakota became a state in 1889, citing cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court has held that submerged lands were not reserved by the federal government. The Three Affiliated Tribes base their premise on three previous federal opinions dating back to the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie that confirms their ownership of the riverbed.

Much more at the link.