Taking Back the Land
6/1/2008, Newsweek
Flames leap up 20 feet around her. White smoke curls into the air and the heat hits her face as Victoria Ranua torches Canada thistle, foxtail and reed canary grass. Ranua is a botanist on an unusual mission. She's trying to burn up any invasive weeds that European settlers brought with them 150 years ago, when they stampeded onto land once belonging exclusively to American Indians. Ranua, who works for the Mdewakanton Sioux Community near Minneapolis, is clearing the ground in a patch of suburban Shakopee to make way for big blue stem, prairie blazing star, purple coneflower and other native plants, which, she hopes, will lure back meadowlarks, raptors, voles and other creatures that once inhabited the territory. "If you're going to preserve the culture, you have to have a landscape," says Stan Ellison, the tribe's land manager.

Gaming rule poses major time sink for tribes and BIA5/30/2008, indianz.com
Tribes wait years, and sometimes even decades, to complete the land-into-trust process. A new rule from the Bureau of Indian Affairs put a raw stamp on just how much time and money it really takes. Tribes who want to open casinos on newly acquired lands will spend anywhere from two man-years to 20 man-years on their applications, according to the regulations. That's in addition to the one to three man-years the BIA anticipates it will take to review each application.