American Indian Land Trust Lawsuit Settled

(CBS/AP)  Last Updated 11:54 a.m. ET

The Obama administration says it is settling a long-running and contentious lawsuit over royalties owed to American Indians.

Under an agreement announced Tuesday, the Interior Department will distribute a fund of $1.4 billion to more than 300,000 tribe members to compensate them for historical accounting claims, and to resolve future claims that trust assets were mismanaged by U.S. officials.

The settlement resolves a 13-year-old dispute in which Indian tribes claim they were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.

Interior currently manages about 56 million acres of Indian trust land, administering more than 100,000 leases and about $3.5 billion in trust funds.

The settlement also establishes a $2 billion fund for a land consolidation program, which will also incorporate a college and vocational school scholarship fund for American Indian students.

The negotiated settlement requires formal endorsement by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and authorization from Congress to implement the settlement.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the settlement a historic, positive development for Indian country and a major step to reconcile decades of acrimony between Indian tribes and the federal government.

"While we have made significant progress in improving and strengthening the management of Indian trust assets, our work is not over," said Salazar, who announced he is establishing a national commission to evaluate ongoing trust reform efforts.

Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe from Montana who was the lead plaintiff in the case, called the proposed settlement crucial for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who have suffered for more than a century through mismanagement of the Indian trust funds.

The class action case, involving several hundred thousand plaintiffs, was filed in 1996, and had undergone hundreds of motions, dozens of rulings and appeals, and several trials over the past 13 years.

The trust began in 1887 with the General Allotment Act (or the Dawes Act), when tribal lands were divided into parcels (between 40 and 320 acres) and allotted to individual Indians, with the remaining land (ultimately about 90 million acres) sold off to non-Native interests. The Interior Department was assigned to manage grazing, timber and oil and gas drilling on the land, and was to pay Indians royalties for those activities.

As the original Native landholders died, successive generations received smaller undivided interests in the same parcels of land, meaning today there may be dozens, hundreds, even thousands of Indian owners per one parcel of land. Consequently, very few individual owners can obtain meaningful financial benefits from their land.

For more than a century, an untold amount of money meant for some of the nation's poorest residents was lost, stolen or never collected.

The Office of Special Trustee was established by Congress in 1994 to reform financial management of the trust system. Indians sued in 1996, claiming the mismanagement cost them between $10 billion and $40 billion.

Cobell said she is hopeful that the settlement can "help break the cycle of poverty that has held too many families in poverty for generations."


For more info:
Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (doi.gov)
Department of the Interior
cobellsettlement.com

[govtguy]

You might notice what was not said in this reparations process, that is, no one is being held accountable or responsible. BLM, BIA, and other agencies were integeral to this abomination and they are off scott-free with little to no reprimand? How was this allowed to go on for so many years and NO ONE in congress wanted to address this? The AG needs to balance reparations and accountability before he starts giving out the $$$$.

[barbaram99]

Very few touch the fact that there were white slavery. That is right. White slavery in this nation. Poor whites were shipped over here to work for the crown. The American Rev War was an illwgal war yet the english white slaves living here at the time battled against the King. Them whites turnt to the American Indians to learbn things just to kill them and steal from them cos they could not read and write..I think the Indians were were used and and abused. The English subjects of the Crown here were wrong. They wrote the US Constution even tho they were english. So America can never make it right in their eyes.

[toldyouso21]

There was another kind of white slavery in New England. Widows and orphans were auctioned off to work on farms in new England if they could not afford to take care of themselves or could not pay their debts. For them--the towns people who bid the lowest got the person. The deal was this: They would put people on the auction block and the towns people would bid on them --how much the township had to pay the person taking them in to do so--the person who bid the lowest got them. Orphans or Widows with small children had to work as housekeepers, nannies or light hands work and had to stay at least until all debts were paid off--children without parents usually had to stay until they were 21. There were abuses including rape of widows and children. in one instance, it was recorded that a man notorious for being cruel to children and especially and "peculiarly" interested in young boys bid on a certain orphan who was about 8 years of age--the towns folk tried to bid so low that the man could not get the youngster, but the old farmer said he would take the lad for free. No sooner had he got the boy down from the block, when he kicked the boy in the backside and frogmarched him to his cart, the boy ran away from the man several times and was seen to be covered in scars and welts from many beatings--he complained to a chaplain that he was "sorely used" by his master, but alas, no one ever stepped up to relieve him--the boy was believed to have finally run away at the age of 14 or so as no one ever saw him again--but some believe that harm might have come to the boy at the hands of his master. this is but one case of many--it was traditional for the indigent or those who fell on hard times to be auctioned on a block--though white women were not forced to undress and be handled like black women--they were forced to open their mouth, allow themselves to be examined, and to present their backs, legs and feet and hands for inspection as well as allow themselves to be examined facially---young girls were often not allowed to be separated from their mothers if they were under the age of 8--but those 8 and older often went to various other farms. For their pay--they were given room/board and clothing, the children rarely went to school and more than one girl ended up pregnant by the farmer who bought her--girls also had to stay and work until 21 or until they married--but they often received little opportunity to meet suitors.

[toldyouso21]

y myeyedea December 8, 2009 1:00 PM EST
Not only is your comment totally unrelated to the issue of the article, but the South only existed because of the rampant betrayal, removal, and exploitation of the Native People. The South made slavery the foundation and infrastructure for its function - the first journal entry of Christopher Columbus was that the Natives would make excellent slaves, and had the American Indians been able to survive the European diseases, the African slave trade would never have been because it would've been unnecessarily expensive to ship people across the ocean when there were 'enslavable' people already here. This country was founded on thieving and genocide, and while I'm proud to have grown up in the South, no decent and honorable American, Southern or otherwise, would expect to be apologized to, or repaid for, its abuses of its own brothers and sisters.

This country owes more to the American Indians than just money - parts of the very design of governance for the United States was modeled directly after the governments of American Indian Nations. Not only did the white European usurpers not know how to survive in this newly discovered country without Native aid, but they didn't know how to form a government that actually was ruled by The People - they had to look to the 'savage', 'barbarous', 'uneducated' Natives as a guide to how to build a system of government that was actually for The People.
___________________________________

I agree with your post except: you acknowledge the use of blacks but no mention of a need for reparation or compensation to them--EVER--and for all the sagacity of the Indians--it is kind of ironic how stupid they were isn't it? After all, you point out whites could not have survived here without the help of a few Indians--so are those Indians now considered traitors by the descendants of those tribes? Or are all the tribes so intermixed with white blood that being angry at this betrayal would be like hating themselves? Because without a doubt--if whites could not have survived without Indians--then the Native American population owes their own destruction to their gullibility and collaboration with whites--ironic, isn't it?

Note: My family is part Cherokee and many say that Pocohantas and Squanto should be seen as sellouts and traitors for helping the people who eventually destroyed so many of the Native Americans. There are Squantos and Pocohantas types in almost every land that Europeans enter--Al Maliki is the Squanto of Iraq--always collaborators who help the enemy destroy them--eh? for a price.

[toldyouso21]

Why should whites have to repay for land or oil or anything else stolen from Indians from a time period in which none of the beneficiaries are alive? Isn't that what is always said about reparations to blacks? Why the double standard (I'm part Cherokee but fair is fair and double standards are double standards)

[Brokennews]

1.4 Billion divided by 300,000 is about $4,600 a piece.

by endurorob_5 December 8, 2009 11:22 AM EST




$4600 is still heap big wampum. Buy much fire water. Maybe buy wife for my boy, Stands with Stiffy. Him ugly, but money make boy handsome!

[dbaecht]

brokennews, your a lost cause

[lovenpeace1]

Folks,

What was worst? The Holocaust of American Indians or the Slavery of Africans by European Whites?

Any white American you ask will tell you they worked hard for their wealth. LOL!

[FauxNews]

Try to explain that to a White Congress and they will charge you for the boat ride, lol.

[eboneeman38]

Yeah, they will also tell you, they are christians, hypocrites.

[mikethek]

$4,666 per person and that is before the gready lawyers get their cut.

[barbaram99]

It is a fact the the the American Indians were wrongly done..This whole nation we call the US of A belonged to them . They blood white people stole it from them. The white folks stated the US of A using the stolen Indian lands..I have met an Indian lady who told me to go home..I asked my sighted friend what she meant. I got a history lesson . I have never felt such hatred than I did that day. She told me to go home. I don't know what nation my kin came from when they came to America as that died with them.element51 is right.The only way it could ever be made right is this nation be given back to the American Indians where this land rightfully is theirs. The fed govt did steal from them as yet the Ameican Indians will never have their lands. The govt put them on patches of land. iIt is sad, appallling. When the non Indians came to this nation our kins should been sent back to their nations in the first place.That money is so little that they been given.

[FauxNews]

Indians were stealing land from each other long before the Europeans got here. So wouldn't America belong to the first tribe who got here? How about the Neanderthals? No one is speaking up for them.

I guess the only thing we know for certain is the Moon is the sole property of Neil Armstrong's descendants.

[toldyouso21]

Americans should remember your words when the Mexicans succeed in retaking America and resettling it for Hispanics--we steal..then it is stolen from us--and then when they control more than California, they move all of the rest of us to Texas or some other state and tell us that is all ours--probably move the other 255 million to death valley or something--because what comes around goes around and America's days as a white dominated society are numbered...then we will see who cries for reparations and how it falls on death ears....

[bubbadubba]

Thank you for calling them American Indians.
As someone who is part Cherokee, it offends me to have my people called "Native Americans" because that is just plain idiotic since anyone born in America is a native American.
The worst and longest Holocaust in history is the murder and Genocide of American Indians. Over 500 years almost 100 million American Indians were murdered and had their land stolen by Europeans and settlers.
I am glad the US is finally trying to honor treaties made with the American Indians since the fraud and lies in those treaties on the part of my government and country signed by Congress and Presidents shames me as an American.

[shoebox119]

To the contrary, nearly all historians concur that the primary cause of the deaths of most American Indians was disease brought on by the introduction of bacteria and viruses the Europeans brought with them to the western hemisphere. Having lived here in isolation for eons, the Indians' immune systems were powerless against this new, invisible enemy. This does not take away from all the other despicable actions and attitudes of the Europeans. Their means of land division destroyed the free roaming habits of the tribes and their Puritan Christian heritage prevented the settlers from integrating or even accommodating another culture. This, to me, is the most shameful part of this land's history.

[toldyouso21]

they are not really trying to honor the treaty. They owed billions and will pay only 1.4 billion back that is a fraction of what they owed--but as many articles attest--for golf courses or oil or trees or to build resorts, the government will steal your land and give very little compensation back. Millions of people have been killed by conquerers all over the world and many by Americans--right now, Canadians are stealing the land of their indigenous people --Americans will steal the land of Indians. I too am part Cherokee, but there is black in my family also--I see this repayment as only a fraction of what is due for the one and a slight for never even acknowledging a need to pay for the other--no one wants a handout--but at some point there has to be an accounting--and no, just saying slavery was wrong does not cut it--my great great grandmother was Cherokee--and both my great grandfather and great grandmother were each half cherokee--they owned slaves--this ain't over by a long shot--but karma is a beeeeyatch and all things eventually trend toward balance and retribution.

[FauxNews]

For the economy, I think Government money building Indian casinos in America is better than making expensive bomb craters in the Middle East desert.