Nebraska tribe pays $65K a year to rent land on its own reservation. It wants it back.

There's a map tacked up on the wall in Kameron Runnels' office – squared lines and small text showing who owns what pieces of the Santee Sioux reservation.

Six of the squares, big chunks of land, are labeled the same: "school land."

Runnels, the tribe's vice chairman, said he always wondered what exactly that meant. Two of the squares are colored in green – land the tribe pays the state almost $65,500 per year to rent and farm, even though it's within reservation boundaries.

When Nebraska was founded in 1867, the "school land" was set aside by Congress to generate money for its public schools,...