What is the process by which the Cowlitz Tribe can obtain its own reservation?
The Cowlitz Tribe is, and for a long time has been, a Tribe that owns no trust land at all. The federal government provides no land acquisition assistance to tribes, so the Cowlitz Tribe must acquire land on its own and then petition the Department of the Interior to placed that land in trust through the “fee to trust” application process. The Tribe must also request that Interior designate the trust land as the Tribe’s reservation. Only after the fee-to-trust and reservation proclamation processes are finished will the Cowlitz Indian Tribe be treated equally with other federally recognized tribes in Washington state, and only then will the Tribe have an established a land base upon which it can create economic opportunities that will provide benefits for Tribal members and surrounding communities. The processes generally take years to complete.
