What I Learned About Native Americans, While Buying a House

It all started when we decided to buy a property in the desert. I knew from the get-go; we were set to go through one of the most stressful situations ever: becoming homeowners.

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Cathedral City and Yucca Valley suddenly were names I was familiar with. My vocabulary had changed so much after we had decided to move from one coast of the country to the other one.

Every plant, every scent, every tan, had changed for good. That feeling of being on vacation had slowly left after some weeks of living in this new town. All we had to do was buy a house and we would be locals.

But no warning given for a document we needed, before closing the deal. A piece of paper, with updated records, coming directly from the Bureau of Indian affairs — BIA for short.

Essentially, indigenous tribes own these lands, and anybody taking interest in properties, let’s say a developer trying to build a new complex, needs to lease the land from them and get further authorizations.

52,000 acres were deeded in trust by the U.S Government to the Agua Caliente Indians in 1876. Since then, lands have been leased from the tribes, before building any structures on…