[JumpCrisscross]

> The idea is they don't want their land to be owned by anyone other than the native people... hence the small portions of land split among the indigenous and handed down through generations

The legal way to do this is for those many owners to put their land in a private or public trust, either to be held indefinitely for public non-commercial use or held in the name of the trustees and their beneficiaries. Trying to do this informally is inefficient and silly.

[leggomylibro]

The way you describe it, trying to do it formally sounds inefficient and silly.

[JumpCrisscross]

> trying to do it formally sounds inefficient and silly

Irrespective of how things sound, there is a reason every modern civilization develops a system for recording land ownership early on. Land disputes are historically nasty. Where records are non-existent, they get violent; where records are bad, they jam the courts. There are many systems varying aims; our American one is among the more flexible in the world.

Flipped around, if these ownership claims had been properly recorded a generation ago, the current fiasco wouldn't have happened. Better late than never.