Resource Extraction Under Governance and Land Tenure Regimes: Lessons from American Indian Reservations

Abstract

"This paper uses the formation of tribal governments and policy changes relaxing federal leasing constraints on American Indian reservations to examine the role of land tenure on reservation resource development. Using a reservation-level panel dataset from 1939-1978, with information on tribal governments, changes to land tenure, and natural resource production, this paper documents how reservations with more access to federal resources altered their mixture of land tenure following the relaxation of leasing constraints in the 1950s. Next, the paper explores the consequences of these changes in the land tenure mix for oil and gas development. Preliminary results suggest that high federal access reservations retained more land under tribal control at the expense of fee-simple. Reservations that retained more land in tribal ownership experienced more oil and gas development in the subsequent decades."