Tribal Trust Land Status in Mountrail County, North Dakota

The Two Shields case: a documented fight over trust-land oil and gas leases near Parshall

Ramona Two Shields and Mary Louise Defender Wilson held individual trust allotments -- parcels allotted under the Dawes Act of 1887 and held in trust by the federal government -- on the Fort Berthold Reservation near Parshall, within Mountrail County. In 2007, the Bureau of Indian Affairs ran a sealed-bid auction for oil and gas leases on Fort Berthold allotment land, and between 2006 and late 2009 a company called Dakota-3 acquired thousands of acres of these leases. The allottees alleged Dakota-3 obtained the leases at below-market rates, and that the BIA approved every one of them without denying or renegotiating a single lease on the allottees' behalf, despite the agency's fiduciary duty to ensure lease terms served the Indian owners' best interests.

The scale of what happened next is what makes this case worth knowing: Dakota-3 resold those leases to the Williams Companies in November 2010 for a reported profit of nearly $900 million. Two Shields and Defender Wilson filed a putative class action alleging the government breached its fiduciary duty and that Dakota-3 aided and abetted that breach -- but the case did not succeed. A February 2015 summary judgment in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, affirmed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2015, held that the claims plaintiffs raised had already been covered and released by the Cobell Settlement, the landmark class-action settlement over federal mismanagement of Indian trust accounts and assets.

What this means for trust and allotted land near Parshall today

The practical lesson isn't that allottees have no recourse generally -- it's that this specific legal avenue, for leases and claims arising in the Cobell Settlement's covered period, is closed. For a buyer or anyone negotiating with an allotment owner or heir near Parshall today, the case is documented evidence that BIA-administered lease auctions on Fort Berthold allotments have, in the past, produced leases that turned out to be worth far less than what industry buyers were later willing to pay for the same interests. That history is a reasonable basis for an allottee or their heirs to negotiate current lease or sale terms more cautiously, and for a buyer to expect that process to take longer and involve more scrutiny than a straightforward fee-land transaction.

It's also a reminder that individual trust allotments frequently carry fractional, multi-heir ownership from a century of inheritance without consolidation -- a separate practical complication from the leasing-fairness issue the lawsuit raised. A companion federal mechanism, the Fort Berthold Mineral Leasing Act, addresses part of this by permitting a lease once owners holding a majority interest in a fractionated allotment consent, rather than requiring unanimous consent from every heir -- relevant background for anyone approaching a specific allotment near Parshall about a current lease or purchase.

Where to get parcel-specific answers

• Confirm a specific parcel's trust-or-fee and allotment status directly with the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Fort Berthold Agency before assuming a standard fee-land closing process applies.
• For any allotment with multiple heirs, ask the BIA whether majority-interest consent under the Fort Berthold Mineral Leasing Act has been (or can be) used, rather than assuming every co-owner must individually agree.
• Request a current BIA title status report for any trust or allotted parcel near Parshall -- a county GIS layer or listing description won't reflect trust ownership shares or lease history.
• Don't assume the Cobell Settlement covers a current dispute; it resolved claims tied to specific historical periods and accounting failures, not every future leasing question on Fort Berthold trust land.
• Involve an attorney experienced in federal Indian trust and mineral law for any transaction involving allotted or trust interests near Parshall, given the documented history of leasing-value disputes in this specific area.