Managing a Native American Legacy of Land and Natural Resources: Development and Implementation of the Forest County Potawatomi Land Administration and Territorial Management System

Abstract submitted to World Bank Land and Poverty Conference 2018: Land Governance in an Interconnected World March 19-23, 2018, Washington, DC

BY  KEVIN BARTHEL (LEAD), JILL URBAN KARR (TRIMBLE) AND CASEY SWANSON (FC POTAWATOMI)

This paper recounts the development and implementation of a land administration and territorial management system for the Forest County Potawatomi Native American Community of Wisconsin. This system can serve as a model for not only native communities of the United States, but communities throughout the World seeking to preserve and maintain control of their land and natural resources, especially in situations of encroachment and competition.

The Forest County Potawatomi are a proud and persistent Native American community who trace their historic lineage and residence in northern Wisconsin to the 1660s. After the American War of Independence, early US Government policy toward native communities was based primarily on competition for and control of natural resources, namely land. As a result of this policy, cessions of land began in the early 1800s and as a result of the Chicago Treaty of 1833 the Potawatomi lost control and use of approximately five million acres to the US Government.

With the signing of the Chicago Treaty and the vigorous implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, most Potawatomi were quickly forced to move west of the Mississippi River. Yet a small band of Potawatomi refused to move west and decided to seek shelter, and try to maintain their traditional life by fleeing back to the forested regions of their ancestors in northern Wisconsin. In doing so, the Potawatomi found themselves in direct competition with an ever‐increasing number of northern European immigrants arriving to Wisconsin intent on building their own sense of community on the very same land.

In 1894 the Potawatomi used provisions of the Indian Homestead Act to acquire several family homesteads. While this move to the cut‐over timber lands of Forest County clearly exacerbated their poverty, the resulting isolation to the northwoods of Wisconsin in many ways enabled them to preserve much of the original language and culture of their predecessors. In 1913, the US Congress recognized the Potawatomi residence in northern Wisconsin and paid outstanding funds from the Treaty of Chicago in the amount of $150,000 for the Potawatomi to purchase 11,786 acres of land scattered throughout Forest County. An important provision of this purchase was the restriction of sale of land to non‐Potawatomi which ensured that the land and resources would remain under the inter‐generational control of the community and were not subject to the out of community sales, inheritances, coercive and fraudulent land sales or local government tax liens that continually tested and ultimately scattered the ownership of many Native American land holdings.

In 1937 the Potawatomi Tribe was recognized under the Indian Reorganization Act and officially established as the Forest County Potawatomi Community and in 1988 the Forest County Potawatomi lands were granted reservation status and placed ‘in‐trust’ to the US Government for the benefit of the Community. During the same year the National Indian Gaming Act was passed by the US Congress. This legislation provided the Forest County Potawatomi with the opportunity to finally plan for, and expect, economic prosperity and they began achieving this by purchasing in 15.6 acres of former Potawatomi land in a degraded section of the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and in 1992 constructed and opened the Potawatomi Hotel and Casino as the first off‐reservation casino in the United States. This casino, along with many other commercial enterprises in their portfolio, have enabled the Forest County Potawatomi to become one of the most financially successful Native American communities in the United States.

Today, after centuries of inhabiting these lands and more than 120 years after returning to northern Wisconsin seeking a place to settle, control of their territory and to build prosperity for the Community, the Forest County Potawatomi strive ‘to conserve and develop our common resources and to promote the welfare of ourselves and our descents’. Faced with competing interests and uses of land and natural resources, the Forest County Potawatomi realize that modern land administration and territorial management practices and tools, including information management systems, are needed.

To achieve this objective, in 2016 the Forest County Potawatomi selected Trimble Inc. in partnership with Land Alliance to complete a comprehensive user needs assessment and develop and implement a geo‐ spatially enabled land administration and territorial management system at the Land and Natural Resources (LNR) Division. The project consisted of four phases: (i) on‐site assessment and development of an implementation ‘Road Map’; (ii) detailed workflow and business process review, detailed data inventory and determination of data requirements; (iii) configuration of software and implementation of beta (test environment version), including incorporation of existing geospatial datasets; and (iv) full deployment of system and training of users.

The need, articulated by all the stakeholders of LNR during the user needs assessment, was for an integrated data and workflow system to provide a secure, streamlined, transparent, reliable and accurate land administration environment which will facilitate data sharing and provide a standardized decision‐ making platform. Priorities include: (i) ability to see and track all land lease information; (ii) easy‐to‐use query and visualization solution for executive management and Tribal Council; (iii) an executive dashboard for management to use for “quick” status monitoring and updates; and (iv) better interaction/data sharing with external entities such as US Bureau of Indian Affairs, US Forest Service, US Environmental Protection Agency, Forest County and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The resulting system, a cloud hosted service leveraging Trimble’s Land Folio environment and the LNR’s existing ESRI ArcGIS platform, was deployed on an initial basis in August 2017 and provides information management applications, up‐to‐date and accessible data and workflow and data management throughout the LNR to reduce inefficiencies and redundant data sets to achieve effective management of land and natural resources. The key technical departments of the LNR involved in the development and use of the system are: Land Information/GIS and Real Estate Management, Natural Resources, Forest Management and Housing and Planning. Together these departments administer the territory to the maximum benefit of the Community including monitoring and protection of land and natural resources, comprehensive and integrated planning and physical development, administration of land use, the registration and administration of land rights and management of housing mortgages and commercial and residential structures. Linkages to the Information Technology and Legal Departments are key to system accessibility, performance and use.

Before implementation of the integrated system, the LNR departments were mostly standalone data users and data sharing was uncommon. The new system calls for collective data sharing and collaboration to encourage interaction and improve efficiency. LNR staff are currently working to familiarize themselves with the system by loading existing geospatial data and converting and entering maps and documents into the database. Final presentations to Tribal Council and full deployment and use of the system is expected in early 2018.