Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and lives in Fort Hall, Idaho. Trahant’s new book, “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

Also, here is a link to the Cobell settlement website and the Native American Law blog roundup of department heads/White House statements.

I remember the first time I learned of the Cobell case. It was several newspaper-lives ago. Over the years I collected lots of paper, listened to lawyers explanations and written a bit about the litigation.

The original complaint, filed in 1996, said at least 300,000 individual American Indians were victims of a gross breach of trust because of the way the Interior Department mismanaged Individual Indian Money accounts. IIM accounts hold money for individuals from land or natural resource payments as well as other transfers.

I remember thinking at the time about first-hand encounters with such record keeping. One Bureau of Indian Affairs agency superintendent told me that short-term interest from IIM accounts could even be used as a “secret slush fund” for urgent and unbudgeted expenses.

Elouise Cobell’s fourteen-year litigation was both complex and simple. The sheer volume of paper filed with the courts was extraordinary: Thousands of pages of documents, several trials, appeals, and plenty of contempt of court sanctions along the way. The case was also simple, based on this question: Can the government, acting as trustee, account for how it managed individual Indians’ money?

The U.S. District Court in D.C. answered that question this way: “No real accounting, historical or otherwise, has ever been done of the IIM Trust.” Indeed, as late as 1995 the Interior Department testified it was destroying records that could be used for reconciliation of these account.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: blackfee, Blackfeet Tribe, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Cobell, cobell case, Cobell v. Salazar, Department of the Interior, elouise, Elouise Cobell, Mark Trahant

I went up to the Blackfeet Reservation this week to talk to people there about the Cobell case settlement. When I went, on Wednesday, the Senate was preparing to debate a jobs bill that contained approval for the $3.4 billion settlement for Indian people defrauded by the U.S. government of royalties on their land. It seemed that, after generations of being shorted, people might finally get some of the money owed them. A day later, the jobs bill seemed dead and the settlement was once again up in the air – all of which underscored the resignation voiced by the people with whom I spoke for this story:

BROWNING, Mont. – Frank Still Smoking is 76, an age where he’s seen a lot of his contemporaries pass on.

They died, he believes, without receiving justice – in the form of money due them from the U.S. government for mismanaging royalty payments on tribal lands to the tune of billions of dollars over several generations.

This particular injustice might have been added to the seemingly endless list of offenses by the government against Indian people had it not been for the work of Elouise Cobell, who, like Still Smoking, is a member of the Blackfeet Nation.

Fourteen years ago, Cobell sued the government, demanding compensation for the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans defrauded of their money.

In December, after repeated setbacks, a $3.4 billion settlement in Cobell v. Salazar was announced. It was described as one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history. Indian Country celebrated.

And then – nothing.

The settlement, which needs congresssional approval before the money can be distributed, has faced one delay after another, most recently on Thursday night, when Senate Republicans used a filibuster to kill the jobs bill to which the settlement was attached.

“It’s just a wait-and-see game now,” a weary-sounding Cobell said in a telephone interview Friday. “We were so disappointed and disheartened this didn’t get approved because it affects so many people’s lives.”

In Browning, 2,200 miles away from the political power games in Washington, Still Smoking wonders if he’ll end up like his friends, dead before he ever sees a penny of the money due him.

As always, we’ll keep posting updates as the settlement progresses – or not. Someday, someday soon, we hope to write that people are actually getting their money. In the meantime, we’ll try to be patient, too.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Blackfeet Tribe, buffalo post, Cobell v. Salazar, Elouise Cobell, Gwen Florio, Indian trust case, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Jobs bill, Sioux, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Interior Department, U.S. Senate

Here‘s the entire story from the Associated Press:

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) – An investigator for the state Human Rights Bureau found reasonable cause that five Glacier County sheriff’s deputies who are Caucasian were discriminated against when the county and the Blackfeet Tribe signed a cross-deputization agreement.

A report by bureau investigator Ilka Becker said under the agreement, the tribe commissioned Native American deputies who lived on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, a Caucasian deputy married to a Native American and a black deputy to be tribal officers, but not the other white deputies.

An initial agreement was reached last July for deputies to help tribal police on the reservation during the North American Indian Days powwow. County Commissioner Michael DesRosier said the tribe only wanted to include resident deputies because they were easy to reach.

The five deputies who were not commissioned complained about the agreement, which was signed on Aug. 6. Tribal and county officials said the agreement was only temporary and that other deputies would be commissioned.

The excluded deputies filed a discrimination complaint in October, stating Glacier County entered into an agreement that sanctioned discriminatory practices.

Becker found no evidence of malicious intent, but said county officials were liable for discrimination.

Undersheriff Jeff Fauque said he and the four other deputies are trying to settle with Glacier County while also making sure something similar doesn’t happen again.

The report states that Glacier County officials denied discriminating against the deputies because the agreement was withdrawn less than three weeks after it was signed and that the Blackfeet tribe decided who received the “commission cards.” The county also argued the agreement was void because it hadn’t been approved by the attorney general and was signed by only one county commissioner.

Blackfeet Tribal Attorney Sandra Watts has said that the tribe has the legal right to determine whom it authorizes to enforce tribal laws on the reservation.

The deputies and the county have 30 days from when the ruling was issued late last month to reach a settlement. If they cannot, a hearing will be held.

Tags: Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Blackfeet Tribe, buffalo post, Glacier County, Gwen Florio, Native American news, North American Indian Days, Racial discrimination, tribal law enforcement

Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

GREAT FALLS Mont. (AP) – The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council has approved using $5.5 million that’s part of a reservation oil exploration deal to buy land, build a grocery store, and give each tribal member a $200 payment.

Chairman Willie Sharp Jr. says the council approved the plan late last month.

Sharp says the money is coming from an agreement the tribe in northwest Montana signed in December with Houston-based Newfield Production Co. to allow test wells in the middle of the reservation.

Tribal officials have not released the value of the agreement.

But Sharp says the tribe will still have millions left after spending the $5.5 million.

Tags: Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, Blackfeet Tribe, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Newfield Production Co., oil exploration, Willie Sharp Jr.

What a day yesterday! The Cobell story dominated the news around the country and even overseas. Not everyone is thrilled with it – the amount of money is still far below what was originally sought, and other cases are outstanding – nonetheless, it’s the largest such settlement ever in the history of the United States, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Here’s a roundup of some of today’s follow-up stories.

The story received prominent coverage in Indian Country Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and, as they say, many, many others.

Radio pieces include these from NPR. You can listen here, and here.

And finally, some words from Elouise Cobell herself: “I spent a lifetime trying to get justice,” she tells the Missoulian (Mont.) here. “ … “I feel very fortunate that I was able to fight for the under-represented.”

So do we, Ms. Cobell. So do we.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Blackfeet Tribe, buffalo post, Cobell vs. Salazar, Elouise Cobell, Indian trust case, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Native American news, U.S. Interior Department

We’ll update throughout the day, but here’s the entire text of the initial Associated Press story:

By MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says it will spend more than $3 billion to settle a long-running and contentious lawsuit over royalties owed to American Indians.

President Barack Obama hailed the settlement of the case, known as Cobell v. Salazar, as an important step to reconcile Indian tribes and the federal government.

“As a candidate, I heard from many in Indian Country that the Cobell suit remained a stain on the nation-to-nation relationship I value so much,” Obama said in a statement issued by the White House. “I pledged my commitment to resolving this issue, and I am proud that my administration has taken this step today.”

Under the agreement announced Tuesday, the Interior Department will distribute $1.4 billion to more than 300,000 tribe members to compensate them for historical accounting claims, and to resolve future claims. The department also will spend $2 billion to buy back and consolidate tribal land lost by previous generations. The program will allow individual tribe members to obtain cash payments for divided land interests and free up the land for the benefit of tribal communities.

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 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.

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 thousand of Native Americans who have suffered for more than a century through mismanagement of the Indian trust funds.

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.”

The proposed settlement still must be approved by Congress and a federal court judge.

Tags: Blackfeet Tribe, Cobell vs. Salazar, Elouise Cobell, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, U.S. Interior Department

Jack Gladstone brought his music and his culture to Glacier Wolfpack students in Kalispell, Mont., yesterday as part of the school’s First People’s Day event.

“It’s magnificent to sit and to visit with and also share with the freshman that are really the young pups, the young wolves, they will carry hopefully part of the message all through their time here and hopefully it will be resounding and hopefully it will become stronger as the years wear on here,” Gladstone tells KPAX television.

Not only did Gladstone, a nationally known singer and poet, sing for the students and tell them a bit of history and culture, he also taught them games such as double ball.

Freshman Madison Walters says the history lesson took hold.

“They took kids away from their home when they were ages 6 to 16 and brought them to a boarding school where they were forced not to speak their own language, and they had to speak English, and they couldn’t like do their own traditions anymore” she told us.

First People’s Day organizer Bonnie Streeter tells KPAX the event is important because “we need to preserve our culture, whether you’re Greek or Sioux or Polish, it doesn’t matter we need to preserve our cultures, and one of the ways we do that is by preserving language, and by listening to each others story and by appreciating it.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Blackfeet Tribe, Glacier Wolfpack, Jack Gladstone