Report finds Colorado was built on $1.7 trillion of land expropriated from tribal nations

A report published this week by a Native American-led nonprofit examines in detail the dispossession of $1.7 trillion worth of Indigenous homelands in Colorado by the state and the U.S. and the more than $546 million the state has reaped in mineral extraction from them.

The report, shared first with The Associated Press, identifies 10 tribal nations that have “aboriginal title, congressional title, and treaty title to lands within Colorado” and details the ways the land was legally and illegally taken. It determined that many of the transactions were in direct violation of treaty rights or in some cases lacked title for a legal transfer.

“Once we were removed, they just simply started divvying up the land, creating parcels and selling it to non-Natives and other interests and businesses,” said Dallin Maybee, an artist, legal scholar and enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who took part in the Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission, which compiled the report.

“When you think about examples of land theft,” Maybee continued, “that is one of the most blatant instances that we could see.”

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