Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) came one step closer to sealing a long-fought victory in her lawsuit against the Interior Department as the Senate on Friday approved the $3.4 billion settlement in a package. The legislation now moves to the House, where similar language has already been approved.

“It’s 17 below and the Blackfeet nation is feeling warm,” Cobell told the Associated Press. “I don’t know if people understand or believe the agony you go through when one of the beneficiaries passes away without justice.”

Here’s the full AP story on Missoulian.com.

You can read full statements from Elouise Cobell and President Barack Obama on the Senate vote at Jodi Rave’s blog, Buffalo’s Fire.

In other news,
U.S. Senate approves water rights settlements with Crow Tribe, others
The Senate also approved Friday several water rights settlements, including a a $462 million portion going to Montana’s Crow Tribe. Arizona’s White Mountain Apache Tribe and New Mexico’s Pueblo of Taos and a group of four other pueblos were also included in the almost $1 billion settlement.

The measure would guarantee the tribes’ rights to water resources, while the money attached to the settlement would help build safe drinking water and irrigation systems, the Associated Press reports.

“It opens the door to economic recovery for the tribe,” said Crow Chairman Cedric Black Eagle, whose tribe has long struggled with poverty. “We would have the potential to utilize Crow water for industrial use as well as commercial use, having safe drinking water, having an irrigation project.”

Jenna Cederberg

Tags: Barack Obama, Blackfeet, buffalo post, buffalo's fire, Cedric Black Eagle, Crow Tribe, elou, Elouise Cobell, Interior Department, Missoulian, pueblo of taos, us senate, water rights, water rights settlement, white mountain, White Mountain Apache

Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

BILLINGS (AP) — The chairman of Montana’s Crow Indians says the tribe is seeking a $1.5 million bank loan to make up for a sharp decline in revenues.

Crow Chairman Cedric Black Eagle said Monday that the tribe has a $2.1 million deficit for 2010, out of a budget of about $25 million.

He says it is the second year in a row that the tribe dropped into the red, following a 2009 deficit of about $1 million.

A drop in royalties from coal mining and the declining value of some outside investments were blamed. Without the loan, Black Eagle said 165 of the tribe’s approximately 900 employees could lose their jobs.

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Coal, Crow Nation, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Recession

There’s a crying need for more and better housing on many Indian reservations. The shortage is acute and the quality of existing homes is shameful. And don’t get us started on the unemployment problem.

A new federally funded home-building project on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana takes aim at both those issues. Not only will it provide 27 news homes, and put 25 people to work, those homes also are being built by the tribe’s own Good Earth Lodges program.

Good Earth Lodges both makes the blocks for the homes, and then puts up the houses.

Cedric Black Eagle told Billings Gazette reporter Susan Olp, here, about the project and the problems it will address:

On the Crow Reservation, he said, homelessness exists, but it is masked by overcrowding. Often, multiple families live in the same single-family dwelling.

The tribe’s Housing Authority has 1,800 applications for housing. Each year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocates funding enough to build five houses.

The compressed earth block and housing program is the culmination of a research and development project funded by the Division of Energy and Mineral Development, Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development. The goal was to determine if the raw materials needed for the blocks could be found on the Crow Reservation, if the blocks could withstand Montana’s climate, and if a work force could be put in place to carry out the program.

The answer was yes on all three counts, said Larry Lee Falls Down, project manager of the Good Earth Lodges.

“We all know the saying – if this was easy, everyone would do it,” Falls Down tells Olp. “This hasn’t been easy, not everyone is doing it. But we are doing it, and we are going to continue doing it. We will build these houses, and we will continue to build more houses.”

Both the University of Colorado Boulder and the Mortenson Center for Engineering and Developing Communities also are involved with the project.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Crow Indian Reservation, Crow Tribe, Good Earth Lodges, Gwen Florio, Mortenson Center for Engineering and Developing Communities, Native American housing, Native American news, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, University of Colorado

The latest news release from the Seneca Nation – which is furious over a new law banning mail-order cigarettes – accuses President Barack Obama of “deliberate betrayal” of Native Americans.

Obama signed the PACT (Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking) Act yesterday. Read the Buffalo News account here.

The tribe derives significant income from mail-order sales tobacco products. The tribe says that will cause the loss of 3,000 jobs, both Native and non-Native, related to those sales.

But both health groups and big tobacco supported the PACT Act, the latter maintaining that the tax-free nature of the mail-order smokes represented unfair competition.

“The President of the United States invited Native American leaders to Washington D.C. in November and looked us in the eye as a sign of good faith in his pledge to protect federal treaties. Now four months later he has betrayed that promise,” says Seneca Nation president Barry Snyder Jr.

The news release reminds readers that, during his campaign, Obama was adopted into the Crow Tribe, in southern Montana. His adoption by Hartford “Sonny” Black Eagle and Mary Black Eagle made him a member of the Whistling Water Clan, a child of the Newly Made Lodge, and brother to Cedric Black Eagle, now the tribe’s president

“I guess he’s forgotten friends he made when he wanted votes. He is no friend to Indian Country and I would hope the Crow revoke his honorary member status,” Snyder says.

Snyder also blasted members of Congress who voted for the PACT Act, but singled out South Dakota Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin for praise for refusing to support it.

“Congresswoman Sandlin, whose district includes Rosebud and Yankton Sioux nations, had the backbone to point out that the PACT Act will open the door for states to bring felony changes against tribes and tribal businesses. If only our Western New York lawmakers had this same respect for tribal sovereignty,” Snyder says.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Crow Nation, D-S.D., Gwen Florio, Hartford "Sonny" Black Eagle, Mail-order tobacco, Mary Black Eagle, Native American news, PACT Act, President Barack Obama, Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking, Seneca Nation, tribal cigarettes, U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin

A decade-old lawsuit that contends discrimination cost Indian farmers and ranchers nearly half a billion dollars could be nearing an end.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Indian farmers and ranchers this week that the department is “committed to resolving” litigation involving them, the Associated Press reports here.

The suit takes aim at what it contends are discriminatory lending practices by the Agriculture Department’s Farm Service Agency, which issues loans to farmers and ranchers who cannot get credit from commercial lenders.

The Justice Department said the case is expected to be considered again by the court early next year.

The lawsuit, named after George Keepseagle, a Fort Yates, N.D., rancher, says local USDA officials tried to squeeze them out of business by denying them loans that instead went to their white neighbors and by refusing to restructure loans in bad years as was done for whites, according to the AP.

“It’s a detriment to us to have to be put in a position where, truly, the non-Indian farmers and ranchers are getting all the help and we’re not,” says Cedric Black Eagle, chairman of the Crow Tribe in southeastern Montana.

Another long-running suit – filed by Elouise Cobell, who is Blackfeet from Montana – seeks seek billions of dollars on behalf of Indian people who claim they were swindled out of oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties administered by the Interior Department since 1887.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Crow Tribe, Elouise Cobell, George Keepseagle, Native American farmers, Native American news, U.S. Department of Interior

Two-hundred people on Montana’s Crow Reservation got the bad news yesterday. Here‘s the story.

The tribe blames the drop in its biggest source of revenue, coal, and also cites the unexpected $148,000 cost of this year’s election to replace Chairman Carl Venne, who died in February.

“The decision to lay off any employee is a very difficult one,” says Chairman Cedric Black Eagle. “My administration values the commitment and hard work of our employees, and it is with deep regret that layoffs are required at this time because of the current economic climate.”

The news comes just three days after the tribe celebrated the beginning of production of natural gas on the reservation.

Kayle Howe, the tribe’s personnel director, says those laid off Friday will be able to reapply for their jobs when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Coal, Crow Tribe, Economy, Native American news