Charles Wilkinson: The Commons and Community Gone Bad:
The Break-Up of the Great Siletz Reservation
Thursday, January 31, 2008 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Ideas Matter / Who Owns the Sky? The Tragedy or Triumph of the Commons: Charles Wilkinson, Professor of Law, University of Colorado: "Native peoples held western Oregon for thousands of years under a
land regime similar in some ways to a commons. Then came deep change: The Table Rock Treaty of 1853—the first Indian land treaty in the American West—and the creation of the Siletz Coast Reservation,
one of the largest and most wondrous of all Indian reserves. By the end of the 19th century, however, development interests had broken the reservation apart. What can we learn about land held by
natives before white people came? About land held by tribes in reservation status? About tribes that are landless or nearly so? Should the United States now restore some ancestral land to the Siletz
Tribe?"
