Trump Transition Team Summary

Valerie Volcovici was reporting on the Trump proposal regarding the privatization of Indian Reservations. She did not express her personal views on the matter, and simply relayed what she had learned about the reasoning behind the proposal during her investigation of the topic. During the course of the interview, Volcovici briefly outlined the Trump Transition Team's proposal and their arguments in favor of it, with approximately equal amounts of time spent on each part of the story. Going from what she reported, it appears that the Trump Transition Team is acting in what they believe to be the best interests of Native Americans.
According to Volcovici, the Trump Transition Team proposal to privatize the reservation land refers to a fundamental

alteration in the role of the Federal Government in maintaining the Reservations for perpetuity. The current arrangement imposes a considerable amount of legal oversight beyond what a private landowner would have to deal with when attempting to lease access to or otherwise exploit mineral resources under their property. The Trump Transition Team, and notably the conservativeargument in general on issues such as this, is that this extra oversight imposes an unjust and unnecessary burden on Native American attempts to exploit the natural resources they control. American Republicans in the last 70 years have argued in favor of reduced government regulations in order to allow individuals the greatest freedom of action possible, as they believe doing so allows people to reach their most productive and happiest level. It is likely that the intention of this privatization effort is merely to level the playing field and allow Native Americans to exploit their land on the same basis as every other private individual.
The freedom to exploit their land as readily as any other private land owner would in theory allow Native Americans to tap into an estimated $1.5 trillion dollars in energy reserves according to the Trump Transition Team. The Transition Team likely intends to allow Native Americans to use this option in order to end the widespread unemployment and poverty endemic to Native American reservations and communities nation wide, which is in line with past Republican efforts to end these same issues. It is no coincidence that one of the Republican Party's slogans is “The best form of welfare is a job.” Republicans believe that everyone must have a purpose in life and money in order to be happy, and that the best way of supplying both is to give them the opportunity to get a job. It is likely that this ideology was also behind the failed Eisenhower-era attempts at integrating Native Americans into mainstream American urban life – the Reservations were turning into pits of unemployment and crime in contrast to the cities of 50s America, so it was logical to Republicans that the solution was to move the Native Americans to the jobs if the jobs wouldn't come to the reservations. These 50s era efforts ended in widespread disaster, as Native Americans ended up not only living in Reservations with little in the way of employment opportunity but also in urban ghettos.
This history of past conservative efforts to assist Native Americans is a source for much of the opposition to the current proposed plan by the Transition Team.

Volcovici briefly focused on this in her interview when she reported about the past history of privatization efforts regarding Native Americans, and mentioned the Dawes Act of 1887 explicitly. The Dawes Act provided for the partitioning and distribution of Indian land among both Native Americans and white settlers as private property. This resulted in the loss of well over half of all remaining territory controlled by Indians in the continental United States. This past act of privatization by the U.S Federal Government, and the disaster that ensued for Native Americans, is probably the source of much of the opposition to this. Volcovici also reported that the current Secretary of the Interior raised concerns regarding the use of the term “privatization” for this reason in particular; the word has some very ugly connotations when used in regard to Indian

land.
It is likely that the Trump Transition Team, which notably is the source of the proposals that Valerie Volcovici was merely repeating for the purposes of the news interview as is the norm for journalists, is acting out of ignorance regarding the past connotations of their terminology.

The use of the word “privatization” is common in conservative circles, and it seems likely that they simply failed to appreciate the negative historical connotations of the word when applied to Native Americans. Furthermore, the information reported by Volcovici indicates that this might in fact restore some further sovereignty to Native Americans regarding their ability to exploit any resources contained on it. There also is a near certainty that allowing Native Americans to tap into energy reserves will inject large quantities of capital into the Reservations, which would likely have a similar effect on their local economies so long as corrupt practices do not siphon the money off as has occurred in the

past.
In regards to the Dakota Access Pipeline, this issue is almost completely separate from that project except in terms of the bipartisan objective of reaching complete U.S. energy independence from foreign energy suppliers and tribal sovereignty. The first of these two objectives has notably already been accomplished as of approximately a year ago, when the Untied States became a net-zero energy importer/exporter. The latter issue is much more complex, but is strongly influenced by the same historical issues. Donald Trump and his Transition Team have demonstrated a lack of historical knowledge of how Native Americans perceive the project, and likely fail to understand just how passionate they are about this issue. I predict that these two issues will be forced by the Trump administration within the first 100 days of the Trump Presidency due to their lack of appreciation for the historical context surrounding their rhetoric and past affronts to Native opinion regarding infrastructure projects on their land.