Tribe Keeps Its Land From Being Divvied Into Slivers

As Celia Sheoships wanders across her 80-acre property along Mission Creek, she appears to be in a lonely place. But the vast open spaces that surround her home are deceiving; Sheoships actually has plenty of company. Too much, in fact.

There are more than 50 people who own part of Sheoships’ land allotment on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. With each new generation of people, that number grows significantly because antiquated federal rules require that undivided allotment shares be passed equally to heirs.

Since the reservation was first divided in 1885, the process has been complex. If a man owns an 80-acre allotment and fathers four children, each child receives an allotment share of 20 acres. If one child has three children, they each inherit a 6.66-acre share.

A third-generation child rears two children and passes on a 3.33-acre share to each.

After 116 years of allotment fragmentation, many allotments have 40 to 50 owners. But the total allotment remains intact, and land-use decisions must be approved by 51% of all allotment co-owners.

If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is.

The thought of getting a handful of immediate family members to agree on anything, let alone major land-use decisions, is daunting at best. But reaching a land-use agreement with numerous distant relatives, who might not even know where the property is located, has proven sadly elusive for many Indians.

They own a piece of their homeland, but it sits idle as their dreams of building a home or pursuing other land-use opportunities fade with each passing year.

Sheoships is luckier than most. She is an immediate descendant of the original allottee and owns the biggest share of her allotment, about 20 acres.

When one of the smaller shares becomes available, Sheoships looks to buy it as a means of consolidating land ownership. “There are several people I’m talking to who have shown interest in selling their shares,” she said. “Sooner or later, they eventually sell because their piece is getting smaller and smaller.”

Many of the undivided shares Sheoships would like to buy are less than one-quarter of an acre. In the last 10 years, she has purchased two undivided shares and is considering the purchase of four or five more.

Sheoships, 56, is a secretary for the tribe’s public defender’s office. Besides the allotment she lives on, she owns smaller undivided shares in 12 other allotments. She lives in a modest three-bedroom house on the allotment that was built by her grandparents more than 50 years ago. Her goal is to consolidate ownership of the allotment and pass on the property to her 33-year-old son and his family, who live with her on the reservation.

Their home is nestled among a few trees at the base of the Blue Mountains, bordered by a terraced wheat field.

But the low price for a bushel of wheat has been costly to Indians as well as area farmers, and the property is unused today after more than 40 years of wheat production.

“The cost of farming is too much to lease the property,” Sheoships said. “I’d like to see it being used to produce something and not sit idle.”

In bountiful years of the distant past, her property produced more than 80 bushels of wheat per acre, netting as much as $1,000 for each owner of an undivided interest.

In recent years, due to a stagnant wheat market, smaller share owners have received as little as 4 cents a year from wheat production.

Depending on each family, a single allotment can have owners who are enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and nonenrolled Indians of varying racial and ethnic background.

To further confuse the issue, non-Indian-owned allotment shares are converted from trust to fee land.

Sheoships wants to return her allotment to sole ownership of enrolled members who are ancestors of the original allottee.

In the consolidation process, she works with the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which holds reservation allotments in trust for property owners.

“More recently, our Indian people have realized the fractionation problem and are leaving wills that specify the amount they want to leave their heirs,” said Leslie Spencer, a real property management specialist with the BIA. “It’s more of a family value type of thing. They want to include all family owners.”

Disposal and acquisition of undivided shares has increased since the Confederated Tribes adopted an inheritance code in 1999 that prevents an allotment share from being left to anyone who is not an enrolled member.

Other tribes, such as the Warm Springs and Yakama, have had similar codes in place for many years.