Fractionation is the process by which land holdings become smaller and smaller through the process of inheritance, often to the extent of losing any use value.
In some communities, the extreme fragmentation of property means that much of the land is “[lying] in waste”
(Frantz 54)
; each individual’s piece of land is too small to use. This situation has a paralyzing effect on Native agriculture and economies:
Fractionation creates not just an oppressively complicated administrative burden, but more importantly and fundamentally, fractionation has effectuated a constructive dispossession of Indians within Indian Country. Ownership of legal title may be staunchly protected, but the result on the ground is realistic deprivation of any of the other potential benefits of that land ownership. Homelessness and poverty persist within the traditional homeland, and Indian Country continues to face critical obstacles to true economic, cultural, and political security.
(Creel, 1)
In some cases, landowners manage to make some profits by leasing out land that is too small to farm. Many of the tenants are non-Native. The result, as one scholar summarizes, is that "[t]he territory that was once reserved for the Indians is now interspersed with 'white' patches and thereby, to some extent, escapes the control of the tribe"
(Frantz 57)
. Through allotment, native communities were removed from familiar systems of sustenance and forced to “farm” in lands that were inadequate and barren. “Poverty and its related problems of hunger, poor health, and homelessness became rampant in many Indian communities. Allotment forced Indian communities to rely on the federal government's administration of their assets, a move that devastated not only existing tenure systems but many other aspects of traditional cultures as well”
(Creel, 6)
.
In 1960, the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs published a study on the negative impacts fractionation has on Native communities. The study included 9,000 survey responses from individuals and reiterated the compound problems created by fractionation due to allotment. The report found that the “rule of heirship land” that caused increased fractionation also increased federal administrative costs and decreased heir income due to the unusability of the small tracts of land left to them
(Creel, 7)
Example
Tract 1305 [on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Lake Traverse Sioux Reservation] is 40 acres and produces $1,080 in income annually. It is valued at $8,000. It has 439 owners, one-third of whom receive less than $.05 in annual rent and two-thirds of whom receive less than $1. The largest interest holder receives $82.85 annually. The common denominator used to compute fractional interests in the property is 3,394,923,840,000. The smallest heir receives $.01 every 177 years. If the tract were sold (assuming the 439 owners could agree) for its estimated $8,000 value, he would be entitled to $.000418. The administrative costs of handling this tract are estimated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs at $17,560 annually. Today, Tract 1305 more closely resembles the rule in Indian Country than any exception
(Creel, 7)
.