Solving the Housing Crisis in Indian Country

This presentation explores a variety of approaches to the unique complexities of developing housing during a housing crisis in tribal communities. Over the long history of colonization, tribes have had to remain creative to respond to an ever-evolving pattern of Western development and demands on the land, from enclosure to allotment to fractionation. Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation established a 99-year lease structure to enable land that would otherwise be prohibited from sale out of tribal ownership, making mortgage lending difficult. Examples showcase how unique cultural, linguistic, and traditional knowledge backgrounds have informed creative adaptation to work in harmony with the land, even within a colonized land-tenure framework.
Closed Captioning