Billings, Mont. (AP) Two North Dakota communities are part of an expanded effort to consolidate tribal lands owned by multiple individuals.
The interior secretary says 21 native american communities in 12 states will join the land buyback program by 2017, bringing the number of locations in the program to 42.
The program was a central piece of a $3.4 billion settlement in 2009 of a class-action lawsuit that claimed interior department officials mismanaged trust money held by the government for hundreds of thousands of native landowners.
The added North Dakota communities include three affiliated tribes of the Fort Berthold reservation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
Roughly 245,000 owners of fractionated land on 150 reservations are eligible to participate in the program.