Little Shell Tribe Gets Timetable For Recognition Federal Status, With All Its Benefits, May Come By February

The Little Shell Tribe of the Chippewa Cree might know in five months whether the tribe will receive the federal recognition it has long awaited.

Chairman John Gilbert of the tribal council discussed the timetable Saturday in Great Falls, at a meeting of the council.

“We’re just ecstatic,” he said. “It’s been such a long wait.”

The Little Shells recently were notified by the Branch of Acknowledgment and Research, part of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, that their petition for recognition could be accepted or rejected on Feb. 12. The agency also reserved the right to extend that date another six months. “In any event, it appears that the Little Shell petition review is now in full swing,” Gilbert said.

Gaining federal acknowledgment is expected to bring various benefits and entitlements to tribal members. Included would be access to Indian Health Service clinics, housing benefits and education and child-welfare funds.

Just as important is the sense of unity that recognition would give tribal members who have no reservation of their own, Gilbert said.

The Little Shells, known as the “landless Indians,” have sought a reservation, as well as federally conferred status as a tribe, for almost as long as tribal members have lived in Montana.

In treaties signed in the 1860s and 1890s, the Little Shells lost the land they occupied in Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana. With no land, they had no status as a tribe in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Since then, the tribe’s history has included efforts toward recognition that date to the 1930s, rejection of a petition in the late 1980s and the filing of a supplement to the most recent petition in 1995.

The tribe now counts as its members some 4,000 Montanans and residents of surrounding states.