The Cobell Lawsuit and Settlement are like day and night.
If you studied this lawsuit from the beginning, you would understand the governments’ intent of stealing our land and money and using taxpayer’s money to do it. The U.S. was homeless and needed land for the never ending tsunami wave of settlers. Settlers were justification for the U.S. Army to be in Indian Country under treaties for their protection but it was mostly for the protection of settlers trespassing claiming free Indian land. Also, settlers were new voters for electing scheming congressman, creating deteriorating Indian laws and the dysfunctional Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Remove the Indians, put them on reservations allot them 80 acres per person, sell off surplus lands and force dreams on them of being a rich white farmer is what is called 1887 Dawes Act. This act unknowingly forced the U.S. into a trust they can never explain and had no intentions because its long term goal was Indian termination.
Centuries old, critical public investigations documented historical Indian genocide from the Act and yet it continued. The U.S. knew that land fractionation is like a cancer destroying Indian land ownership forcing public tax distress sales to non-Indians. The US/DOI/BIA, a poser, historically failed its trust responsibility duty has orchestrated Indian termination silently well.
Then the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians was suppose to fix the BIA but instead tried to reform the trust but not fix it. This trust meaning we should have had the best of everything like a bankers’ trust: best beneficiary services and wealth management. The President/DOJ/DOI/BIA/OST did neither. OST is a total waste of money.
The Cobell lawsuit exposed the worst crime ever other than the crucifixion. OST failed an accounting of all (Individual Indian) funds and didn’t fix the BIA. The Cobell Settlement is like using our lost money to pay for the governments’ mistakes; buying our own broken lands back and giving it to the Tribes, giving scholarship to all Indians and not just IIM heirs, paying to administer these funds and paying the IIM Accountholders holders less than 50% of the total.
During the past 16 years, the Cobell lawsuit has learned a lot from the most powerful country of all times. The U.S. brow beat the lawsuit and must have whispered to them that: this lawsuit will remain in court forever; this lawsuit will get more expensive, many accountholders will die without payment; we will continue to lose and mis-use Indian money; we will waste taxpayers money and blame the Indians; we will never fix the BIA nor will we never create an Indian Trust Policy that will protect the Indians from us. Thus, the Cobell Settlement.
Those appealing said an accounting was never done which is true. US/DOI/OST/Office of Trust Records has destroyed so many Indian trust records that a true accounting can never be completed accurately. Even though it was tribal lands that was allotted, the money that came from these lands started with the 1887 Dawes Allotment Act. Some of these tribal land reservations were actually purchased with tribal treaty money and should not have been allotted in the first place.
The same broken trust that administers the trust responsibility over Individual Indian lands also administers over tribal lands, Although, the Tribes were not included in the Cobell Lawsuit, they should have whole heartedly supported the lawsuit. This lawsuit would have been our latest and greatest war against the most powerful Nation of all times.
The U.S. can send a man to the Moon and maybe Mars, travel to the bottom of the deepest Ocean, fight wars on opposite side of the world, clone animals but cannot fix the broken trust problem with Indian services.
Thomas M. Wabnum
Prairie Band Potawatomi
IIMAccountholder@comcast.net