16. Department of the Interior · Notable · Needs Congress
Reauthorize the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations
Printed page 538 16. Department of the Interior
“Finally, the new Administration should seek congressional reauthorization of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, which provided a $1.9 billion Trust Land Consolidation Fund to purchase fractional interests in trust or restricted land from willing sellers at fair market value, but which sunsets November 24, 2022. New funds should come from the Great American Outdoors Act.”
What has happened
- Not started
No reauthorization of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations has been sought or enacted. A search of all 18,433 bills in the congress.gov corpus for the 119th Congress returns no bill on the program or on the Trust Land Consolidation Fund; none of the 104 public laws reauthorizes it; and no administration request appears in Interior's 2025–2026 press releases or in the FY2026 and FY2027 budget requests reviewed for this chapter, which propose no new funding for it from the Great American Outdoors Act or elsewhere. Interior's Indian trust work in the window has gone to probate throughput instead — a $28 million probate surge in May 2026, an electronic probate system in July 2026 — and Congress enacted the Tribal Trust Land Homeownership Act (P.L. 119-88, 2026-05-04), which speeds mortgage processing on trust land rather than consolidating fractional interests.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
The Trust Land Consolidation Fund sunset on 24 November 2022. Nothing in the 119th Congress reauthorizes it.
- Action
- reinstate
- Object
- Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations
- ID
- 1527