If consolidated, each of those owners would be sitting on a piece of land the size of a couch. Only after several thousand years would a penny be tallied from it, assuming the fractionation stopped there because they had no heirs. William Youpee had a will and his heirs, not the tribes, should have acquired his small holdings in Montana and the Dakotas. But Youpee had never been notified that those shares might be taken when he died, so his heirs challenged the law. About a year ago, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, because the owners were not compensated.
Compensation can be very costly, though.
Youpee, for example, owned undivided interests in several tracts of land across three reservations. The appraisal work done to compensate the heirs cost more than the land was worth. However, his 460 acres were mostly inaccessible by roads, so he proposed trading it to the tribe for 400 acres up Reno Creek, close to Crow Agency. The trade took three years, but his sole ownership is secure. Yarlott got a brand new modular home, complete with furniture, through Housing and Urban Development a couple years ago.