Abstract
American Property Law and Federal Indian Law have a conjoined history going back to Johnson v. MʻIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823), where the Supreme Court ruled that private citizens could not purchase aboriginal title from Indians. Decades later, the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 resulted in non-Indian fee simple landowners purchasing what the Federal Government deemed “surplus” federal land in the un-allotted former Indian land, which is still part of the Reservation’s legal jurisdiction. An unintended consequence of this process, which resulted in a checkerboard pattern of land title in Indian Reservations across the country, has recently come to a head in the title insurance and mortgage services industries. In 2023, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, a federally recognized Tribe in Northern Wisconsin, barricaded Tribal roads that were the only access points for forty private property owners. The Tribe’s actions were part of an easement dispute going back several years with the Town of Lac Du Flambeau along with First American and Chicago Title Companies, who provided title insurance policies to the private property owners. This Article will explore the implications of the barricades and litigation as well as possible solutions to the upcoming storm for Indian Country related to title insurance policy litigation, as exemplified by the Lac Du Flambeau barricades case and the title companies’ own carelessness in choice of law and choice of forum provisions in their title insurance policies.
Repository Citation
Nicholas Stamates,
Titletown Madness: Title Insurance Through the Lens of Tribal Jurisdiction and the Lasting Legacy of Allotment,
109 Marq. L. Rev. 1147
(2026).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol109/iss3/9