Across Indian country, two things are never in short supply: rich natural resources and endemic poverty. That paradox is driving a longstanding battle between indigenous people and the government trust that holds money generated from their lands.
The class-action lawsuit, Cobell v. Kempthorne, targets a federal trust fund that handles revenues from activities like oil drilling and logging on land owned by individual Indians and tribes. The trust's financial operations—covering more than 56 million acres and dating back for more than a century—have left a spectacularly messy paper trail. Many beneficiaries say they are in the dark about how much has been paid out and what is still owed, and charge that the system has drained wealth from Indian communities.
“We know that the government collected our money, but it hasn't been paid to us as individual Indian beneficiaries,” says Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet Nation member who initiated the suit in 1996 on behalf of several hundred thousand account holders.
The battle is finally drawing to a close. On Jan. 30, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the trust's finances are beyond salvaging. Calling for a settlement, he denounced the Interior Department's “unrepaired, and irreparable, breach of its fiduciary duty over the last century.”...
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