conditions of Tribal members, reported to J.M. Stewart, the Bureau of Indian Affairs Area Director for California, that there were no public lands available for the Tribe or its members, and all water resources were owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. (10) On December 26, 1950, a formal petition was filed before the Indian Claims Commission on behalf of the Northern Paiute Nation, which included various individual Northern Paiute Indians and several reservation tribes, all located in Nevada. The original claim, designated as Docket No. 87, did not include California Paiute tribes from the Owens Valley, Mono Lake, Deep Springs Valley, or Fish Lake Valley. During the course of the liability phase of the trial, expert testimony was introduced correcting the oversight, and on August 8, 1951, an amended petition was filed that included the Tribe and other overlooked California Paiute Nations. Unfortunately, the Commission awarded only meager compensation to individual members and did not provide lands to the Tribe. (11) In 1955, the Tribe submitted a petition to State Senator Charles Brown of Sacramento, California, seeking to establish a reservation that included 66,000 acres of land. The petition rested on a 1912 Presidential Executive order that had set aside lands for the Tribe and other tribes in Inyo and Mono County, but was later withdrawn because the original land identified was unsuitable. The Tribe’s petition was again met with the statement that there was no land available for a reservation. (12) Believing that recognition might lead to land for the Tribe, the Tribe submitted a letter of Intent to Petition for Recognition in 1976 to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment and began working on a petition for recognition, an effort that continues today. (13) In 1977, the Tribe adopted formal Articles of Association to define its enrollment criteria and election of Tribal leaders. (14) Also in 1977, the Tribe petitioned and was recognized by the BIA as an adult Indian community of one-half