There’s a map tacked up on the wall in Kameron Runnels’ office showing who owns what pieces of the Santee Sioux reservation.

Six of the squares, big chunks of land, are labeled “school land.”

Runnels, the tribe’s vice chairman, said he always wondered what exactly that meant. The tribe pays the state almost $65,500 per year to rent and farm two of those squares, even though they’re within reservation boundaries.

When Nebraska was founded in 1867, the “school land” was set aside by Congress to generate money for its public schools, 15 years before the Santee Sioux reservation was established.

Today, it's managed by the Nebraska Board of Educational Lands and Funds, a state entity that leases out the land to help fund public schools. Those parcels on the reservation generate about $140,000 a year, with nearly half coming from the tribe itself.

And the tribe, it turns out, sometimes pays thousands more for the right to farm this school land.

The last time a parcel on the reservation came up to be released, the tribe paid a $35,000 bonus bid, on top of its annual rent, said Mike Crosley, the tribe’s land manager.

Leaders like Crosley and Runnels hope that at some point the State of Nebraska will transfer the land to the tribe, similar to what is happening in other states.

Now, Crosley’s concerned that when the current lease expires this month, the new one could be shorter, meaning more frequent bonus payments.

Nebraska Board of Educational Lands and Funds CEO Kelly Sudbeck said the board is required to act in the best interest of generating money for the K-12 school system. If there’s hot competition for land, the lease length may be shortened.

As a condition of Nebraska’s statehood, the federal government granted parcels across the state in trust for schools. At the time, it totaled nearly 2.9 million acres.

Now, the Nebraska Board of Educational Lands and Funds still controls 1.25 million acres in the state, although more than half its original land has been sold to private sector owners.

On the Santee Sioux reservation, the board still owns 2,337 acres in total, about 2% of the reservation, according to data from a national investigation by Grist, a nonprofit media organization.

In total, Grist found more than 2 million surface and subsurface acres on 79 reservations across 15 states, including Nebraska, being used to generate revenue for public institutions.

The land wasn’t taken away from an established reservation when it was given to the board in 1867, Sudbeck said, because the reservation wasn’t there yet. Those plots were excluded from the Santee Sioux reservation in the 1882 treaty that later officially established it.

But the Santee people already had been living in the area by the mid-1860s, Runnels said, after being forcibly removed from Minnesota following the U.S.-Dakota war and later leaving South Dakota, where they had struggled to survive.

They ended up in the Bazile Creek region around 1866, Runnels said, an area that later became the reservation.

In 1868, the Fort Laramie Treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation, which spread from South Dakota into Nebraska and neighboring states. The treaty was later broken by the U.S. government.

Government officials debated removing the Santee from Northeast Nebraska, Runnels said, delaying the creation of a permanent reservation and causing confusion as tribe members tried to farm and build homes.

“If it wasn’t for the scheming and secret conversations from the federal agents … our reservation would have been established much earlier than it officially was, in my opinion,” Runnels said.

By the time the 1882 treaty was signed, ceding the Great Sioux Reservation and establishing the present-day Santee Sioux reservation, Nebraska was 15 years old, and the land had been given to the board.

Competition for good farmland in Knox County is aggressive, said Tad Judge, the board’s field representative. A section outside of the reservation recently went for a bonus bid, a one-time payment at a public auction to win a lease, of more than $100,000.

For its last lease renewals, the Santee Sioux Nation paid bonus bids of $41,000 and $35,000 each, according to records from the board.

The tribe’s bonus bid payments are similar to those for land of comparable quality in the northeastern region of the state, Judge said, especially recently, when farmland and commodity prices have risen.

One of the tribe’s current leases is on a seven-year cycle, the other is on 10, Crosley said. He’s afraid of more frequent bonus bids if those leases are shortened.

By statute, the board’s lease lengths can be anywhere from five to 12 years. That’s longer than the average lease to a private owner, Judge said.

The board does consider demand, and competition could lead to shorter leases. Crosley said neighbors and cattlemen looking to expand have shown up at auctions for the plots the tribe currently leases.

“Everybody's after land,” Crosley said. “It’s just like the gold rush days again up here, as far as land.”

Of the other four plots in the reservation boundaries, all leased by non-Natives, one had a bonus bid of $5,750. The other three did not have bonus bids on the last lease renewal.

Some of those plots have more difficult terrain and aren’t as accessible, which factors into the land’s desirability, Judge said.

Changes to the board’s leasing process, such as giving tribes first right of refusal, likely would need to be decided by the Legislature, Sudbeck said, because the board has a fiduciary duty to make money for public schools and a right of first refusal would likely hurt the board’s proceeds.

“I understand the (board) is doing what they're doing to try to make money,” Crosley said. “That's their job, is to try to make as much money as they possibly can for the schools.”

The Santee Sioux Tribe never owned its entire reservation, Runnels said.

The 1882 treaty was signed during the Allotment Era, when federal law dissected the land into pieces for individual Santee families and gave the remainder to non-Native homesteaders.

A second map in Runnels’ office shows the plots owned by those original families. Blank sections show land given away, primarily to White settlers, spread out like a checkerboard.

By the 1930s, Runnels said, almost all of those Santee families had sold or traded their land away. The tribe was left with a couple thousand acres.

Similar situations lead to reservations in Nebraska shrinking and becoming checkered with non-Native ownership. Like other tribes, the Santee Sioux have made an effort to start buying that land back. And they also pay a higher than usual price.

In the 1960s, they were down to about 3,000 acres, Crosley said. Today, they own more than 20,000 acres, under a quarter of the reservation.

Recently, Crosley bought around 160 acres of land at $10,000 per acre, double the usual price of good cropland, because it adjoined the tribe’s casino and golf course.

“It seems like when the tribe’s involved, the price goes up. I don't know why, but people think we're wealthy because we have a casino. Really, we’re not wealthy,” Runnels said.

Part of the tribe’s strategy now, Crosley said, is to buy up parcels of land surrounding the school land it’s leasing.

Some states, including North Dakota and Washington, are moving toward policies to return state trust lands on reservations in exchange for land elsewhere.

Both Crosley and Runnels would like to see a similar move in Nebraska.

“If this was meant for school purposes for our people, based on everything that we have lost and given up in our history, then we shouldn’t have to be paying for that school land,” Runnels said.

Editor’s note: This story was produced using data obtained through Grist's Misplaced Trust investigation. The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.