The tribes believe the payments did not cover what
they lost. The 1971 court ruling only calculated the land’s
market value, not the other economic and cultural losses the tribes
sustained when the federal government divided up their reservation,
and sold off more than 400,000 acres to non-Indians. On the
question of dollars alone, a Harvard economist’s 1974
research determined that the Salish and Kootenai per capita income
would have been more than 60 percent higher if the reservation had
not been fragmented by allotment. That researcher, Ronald Trosper,
is a Salish and Kootenai tribal member who is now director of the
Native American Forestry Program at Northern Arizona
University.
Ray Ring
HCN
editor in the field
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Editor’s Note.
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