Officials with the village of Hobart, just west of Green Bay, have filed an appeal of a judge’s decision against the village in its ongoing dispute with the Oneida Nation.
The action is the latest in the more than 20-year feud between the village and the tribal nation.
Nearly the entire non-tribal village of Hobart lies within Oneida Reservation boundaries. As the tribal nation buys land in the village, it moves to transfer it to federal trust, meaning it cannot be taxed nor policed by the village, a common designation for the more than 500 federally recognized tribal nations within the U.S.
This latest case centers on 21 parcels totaling 499 acres that was about to be moved into a federal trust for the benefit of the Oneida Nation by the U.S. Department of Interior. The moved was challenged in court by the village in 2023.
In his Dec. 2, 2025 ruling, U.S. District Judge William C. Griesbach for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in Green Bay said he sympathized with Hobart’s concerns, but only Congress could change the situation.
The appeal process could last a further several months.
The 1887 Dawes Allotment Act purportedly was to protect Indigenous property rights by breaking up land into individual allotments and encouraging farming. However, there were a host of problems: some people didn’t want to farm; some land was unsuitable; some youths had been sent to boarding schools and could neither help nor take over; some allotments were subdivided for heirs in a way that made them too small to succeed.
Overall, vast amounts of tribal land was transferred to non-tribal entities, which allowed villages, such as Hobart, to be created. Congress put a stop to this practice with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, but the damage to tribal lands had been done.
The Oneida Reservation originally spanned about 65,000 acres; today, tribal land is less than half that.
With the advent of tribal gaming, however, tribal nations have enough money to start buying back some of their reservation land. That’s what the Oneida are doing in Hobart.
Transferring the land to a federal trust theoretically protects it from being taken again by non-tribal entities and returns sovereign tribal jurisdiction to the land.
Hobart, a village of about 10,000 residents, argues it is losing tax revenue from the land and has spent about $1 million in legal fees blocking the moves. Although the village has lost major cases, officials argue the spending is justified because they’ve been able to save or delay some taxable land from being transferred.
The village filed a notice on Jan. 30,2026, that it would appeal Griesbach’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.
Frank Kowalski, an attorney for the village, filed his 30-page appellant brief on April 30. He argued the Indian Reorganization Act is unconstitutional.
“The statute allows the Secretary (of Interior) to acquire “any interest in lands” for Indian Country without specifying when, why, how much, or under what constraints,” Kowalski wrote.
He also heavily cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice’s Sam Alito’s dissenting opinion in a recent case, which affirmed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which is meant to protect Indigenous children from being assimilated.
“Judge Alito further observed … Congress’s power to regulate Indian affairs must be limited if it ‘interfere(s) with the power or authority of any state,’” Kowalski wrote.
That case involved a non-tribal couple from Texas had challenged the law saying it was discriminatory by race because it blocked them from adopting a Navajo child. The law gives preference to tribal families for the adoption of tribal children. Oneida Nation attorneys successfully argued the law does not discriminate by race, but rather affirms the rights of tribal nations and sovereignty over its members.
Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@usatodayco.com or 815-260-2262. Follow him on X at @vaisvilas_frank.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Hobart appeals decision to take reclaimed Oneida parcels off tax rolls
Reporting by Frank Vaisvilas, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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