We think this is a fun thing to complain about

A little off our usual beaten track but fun all the same we think.

The GI bill has near-mythic significance in American history — generations of veterans got an education and an easy home loan, the sort of thing that pulls families up into the middle class.

That benefit has never really been available, though, to one group of Americans who serve in the military in very high numbers — Native Americans living on tribal land.

There’s a reason for this too. While there are attempts at workarounds there’s a simple and basic problem here. Land on or in tribal lands is inalienable - it cannot be sold outside the tribal members. In fact, in many to most cases, it cannot be sold at all - leased, perhaps, but not sold.

Given that a mortgage depends upon the, umm, mortgage - technically, the mortgage describes the process by which the security can be collected if the loan is not repaid - then the absence of the ability to have a mortgage on the land prevents there from being a mortgage.

Or, the other way around, inalienable land cannot be pledged as collateral therefore it’s not possible to gain a loan against inalienable land.

We’re not sure there’s any real way around this - any workarounds are always going to be less than that liquid and cheap system which is the American mortgage market. We’re also entirely aware of why that Native American land is inalienable. The results over the centuries when it hasn’t been are both obvious and distressing.

Another one of those proofs that there are no solutions, merely trade offs.

But we do still think it’s a fun thing to be complaining about. The system is deliberately set up to insist that outsiders cannot buy that land. Therefore you can’t get an outsider to finance a mortgage on that land. Well, yes?