The four objectors to the historic Cobell land trust mismanagment settlement say they’re not backing down, even after their names and phones numbers were published in an open letter printed online and sent to thousands of plaintiffs prompted them to receive angry phones calls.

As Associated Press reporter Matt Volz reports, Carol Good Bear is one of the objectors that received a flood of angry phone calls.

At first, the resident of New Town, N.D., hung up on the angry voices at the other end. After 15 calls, she unplugged her home phone and started screening her cellphone calls.

She said she worries for her safety now that her address is in the hands of hundreds of thousands of people who might blame her for holding up their money.

“To put my name out there for the public, I think that’s scary that these attorneys would use this tactic and intimidate me into dropping my appeal,” Good Bear said. “I don’t have protection. If somebody is upset about all this and comes at me with a gun, what am I supposed to do?”

The Cobell settlement was approved by the courts last fall after almost 16 years of court battles. Payments were scheduled to be send out in November before the objections were filed.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys, led by Dennis Gingold of Washington, D.C., wrote in their letter that the “hopes and wishes of 500,000 individual Indians” had been delayed by those four people. If it wasn’t for them, the first payments would have been made before Thanksgiving, the letter said.

“There is little doubt that they do not share the desires or care about the needs of the class, over 99.9 percent of whom support a prompt conclusion to this long-running, acrimonious case,” the attorneys wrote.

The letter went on to list the names, phone numbers and addresses of Good Bear; Kimberly Craven of Boulder, Co.; Charles Colombe of Mission, S.D.; and Mary Lee Johns of Lincoln, Neb. The attorneys invited people to “ask them directly about their motives” and cautioned them to “please be civil in your communications.”

Jenna Cederberg

Tags: associated press, carol good bear, Cobell, Cobell v. Salazar, Dennis Gingold, indian land trust, matt volz

Reserve votes to allow eviction of gang members

A CTV News report from Alberta, Canada (see the full video report here) details a new bylaw OK’d by voters there that would allow tribal officials to remove gang members from the reserve.

The Samson Cree Nation is a violence-plagued reserve, CTV reports.

The band agreed to take the issue to a vote after the July death of the chief’s five-year-old grandson in a drive-by shooting, as well as ongoing gang violence.

There are believed to be about 12 gangs in the four First Nations communities in the Hobbema area.

“It is considered necessary for the health and welfare of the Samson Cree Nation to regulate the residence of its citizens and other persons on the reserve,” states the bylaw, which also includes a provision requiring prospective new residents to apply to a residency tribunal before moving in.

SBA introduces new course for Indian entrepreneurs
In a press release this week, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced a new program aimed at helping entrepreneurs in Indian Country get their business dreams off the ground and into action.

“Native American Small Business Primer: Strategies for Success” is a free, self-paced online business course developed for Native American business owners.

The new online course: emphasizes business planning and market research as essential steps to take before going into business; informs Native American entrepreneurs about the legal aspects of starting a business, including the type of ownership (legal structure) and licensing; and provides key information on seed money for starting up, raising capital, and borrowing money. In addition, there is a section on how to estimate business start-up costs that can help assess the financial needs of going into business.

Craven appeal of Cobell moves forward
ICTMN’s Rob Capriccioso has the latest on an appeal to the historic Cobell land trust settlement given final approval by the courts last year.

The settlement terms have irked some, such as Kimberly Craven, Capriccioso reports. Craven filed an appeal to the settlement in September and has continued to file documents with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as objections to her appeals have filed in. The appeals will most likely delay settlement payments to thousands.

Of note, Craven labels the proposed distribution of the settlement as “upside-down” in that “greatest alleged injuries” would receive “the least amount of money.” The brief also states, “[c]lass members with no hope of recovery have an interest in a settlement that wildly overcompensates them at the expense of class members who do have legitimate claim.”

Cobell lawyers have previously argued that Craven is speculating that class members suffered different types of individualized damages.

Jenna Cederberg

Tags: Alberta, Cobell, Cobell v. Salazar, Gangs, indian country today media network, kimberly craven, land trust, native american small business primer, Rob Capriccioso, samson cree nation, us small business administration

Montana Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus want to honor Elouise Cobell for her lead role in taking on the federal government in the landmark land trust settlement by having Congress award her the Congressional Gold Medal, they announced in a press release today.

Cobell, a Blackfeet tribal member from Browning, Mont., fought for almost 15 years to win the case that was settled for $3.4 billion and will help repay thousands of Natives for trust fund mismanagement by the government. The Montana senators introduced legislation Tuesday to help recognize Cobell’s “outstanding contributions.”

Here’s the joint press release about the proposed honor:

(U.S. SENATE) – U.S. Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus today introduced legislation to award Montana’s Elouise Cobell the Congressional Gold Medal.

Cobell, a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation, is being recognized for ‘her outstanding and enduring contributions to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and the Nation through her tireless pursuit of justice.’

In 1996, Cobell filed an historic lawsuit alleging that the federal government mismanaged trust funds belonging to more than 500,000 individual American Indians. Congress agreed to a $3.4 billion settlement in December of 2010.

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Tags: Cobell, Cobell v. Salazar, congressional medal of honor, Elouise Cobell, land trust settlment

The Court-ordered process of notifying individual Indians of their right to participate in the historic $3.4 billion class action Settlement, Cobell v. Salazar, began this week.

Desautel Hege Communications sent out this notice about the notification process, who is eligible and what they could receive:

Two Classes Eligible to Receive Money from the Settlement:
• The Historical Accounting Class: Individual Indians who had at least one cash transaction in an open IIM Account between October 25, 1994 and September 30, 2009.
• The Trust Administration Class: Individual Indians who owned trust land as of September 30, 2009 or who had an IIM account at any point in time between 1985 and September 30, 2009.
• Estates of deceased Class Members may also be eligible to receive money.

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Tags: Cobell, Cobell v. Salazar, Elouise Cobell

From Indian Country Today’s Rob Capriccioso:

WASHINGTON – Lawyers for the Indian plaintiffs in the Cobell settlement have taken to court to argue that the many millions they are scheduled to receive is too little, but they’ll take it if they can get it.

The settlement, which provides $1.5 billion to individual Indians to resolve the Interior Department’s mismanagement of their royalties for decades, outlines a cap of nearly $100 million to settle lawyers’ fees. It was negotiated by the Obama administration, and must be approved by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan to become reality.

Some Indians with a stake in the case have argued that the amount set aside for attorneys is far too great, especially considering that many class members – those who actually have suffered due to Interior’s negligence – would receive less than $2,000 under the plan.

But, according to court papers filed Dec. 14, the $100 million amount is less than half of what plaintiffs’ lawyers think they would be due under a previously planned arrangement.

“Class counsel have undertaken 15 years of highly contentious and difficult litigation against defendants, including an extraordinary 12 month legislative approval process,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote. “In framing and prosecuting this case, they undertook substantial risk, litigated novel procedural, jurisdictional and substantive legal issues, and navigated through a series of unique appellate [decisions].”

In court papers, the lawyers said “fair compensation” would be much closer to $223 million – which would equate to a major chunk of the settlement, leaving far less for Indian beneficiaries.

The number represents the compensation from a contingency fee arrangement the plaintiffs’ lawyers planned before the agreement with the Obama administration was announced in December 2009.

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Tags: Cobell, Cobell v. Salazar, elouse cobell, inter, Interior Department, president bar, President Barack Obama, royalties, Thomas Hogan

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.

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

Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the Cobell v. Salazar lawsuit, uses this week’s Ask Elouise letter to discuss the passage of legislation in the Senate authorizing the suit’s settlement. She also discusses the fight ahead, as the legislation still needs a nod from the House and the president’s signature to be finally approved.

Cobell writes:

Dear Indian Country

This is the fifteenth letter in a series of open letters that I’m sending to Indian Country. The purpose of this letter is to update you about the settlement.

Since my last Ask Elouise letter (September 30, 2010), I and our representatives have been frequently meeting with both Republican and Democratic Members of Congress and their staffs. We have been advocating on behalf of our settlement legislation and its importance to more than 500,000 individual Indians. The Senate has been a particularly difficult hurdle, having stripped us off of numerous pieces of legislation on multiple occasions for unrelated political reasons.

However, after almost 12 months of working with the Senate, it is with great pleasure that I can share good news with you – on Friday, November 19, the Senate unanimously passed legislation authorizing our settlement. The settlement was revised by the Senate to increase the distribution fund by $100 million and ensure that the neediest members of the class are treated fairly. One hundred Senators voiced their support and voted to pass legislation that will approve this landmark settlement. It is not possible to overstate this unprecedented vote of approval in the Senate.

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Tags: Ask Elouise, buffalo post, Cobell, cobell suit, Cobell v. Salazar, Elouise Cobell

The Senate adjourned Wednesday without giving the Obama administration the authority to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 1996 by Elouise Cobell of Browning, Mont. The Associated Press has the details:

The suit accuses the federal government of mismanaging billions of dollars held in trust for Indian landowners.

The Senate will reconvene for a lame-duck session Nov. 15. Cobell says no decision has been made on whether to press for Senate approval in that session.

The lead plaintiffs’ attorney tells the wonderfully named BLT (Blog of the Legal Times) that they remain optimistic.

“We uniquely have bipartisan support in an environment where you don’t see that often,” Dennis Gingold tells Mike Scarcella.

Tags: Blog of the Legal Times, BLT, buffalo post, Cobell, Cobell v. Salazar, Dennis Gingold, Elouise Cobell, Indian trust case, Mike Scarcella, Native American news, Senate

The National Black Farmers Association wants a settlement order in a class-action suit involving black farmers considered separately from one issued in the Native American trust case known as Cobell.

John Boyd Jr., the group’s president, seeks a cloture vote on a standalone black farmers bill in the case known as Pigford II, according to a story in Indian Country Today by Rob Capriccioso.

“While there are lots of very important causes, the black farmers know that unless this bill is considered on its own merits other bills that have nothing to do with this issue – including the Cobell Native American trust fund case – may keep it from passing. Black farmers are dying, in fact another farmer active in the movement died this past week, and I can’t let politicians use other issues as excuses not to vote on justice for black farmers.”

But as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid points out, “Many American Indians have been waiting; some have died waiting, for this settlement to be funded by this Congress. I support passing settlement funding that pays the plaintiffs in both the Pigford II and Cobell settlements. The plaintiffs in both cases know what it is like to suffer from ongoing wrongdoing and both sides deserve justice. Funding these settlements is something I have fought for over many months and I will continue to push for justice.”

Last year, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were awarded a total of $3.4 billion when the Cobell v. Salazar case was settled. However, that settlement – like the one in Pigford II – needs congressional approval before anyone can receive money.

Elouise Cobell’s suit alleges that Native people were defrauded of millions of dollars, supposedly held in trust for them by the government, in royalties from resource development of their lands. Black farmers cheated by the USDA received $1 billion in Pigford I in the late 1990s; Pigford II would provide $1.2 billion more to resolve claims by others, Capriccioso writes.

Cobell lawyers didn’t comment on the suggestion, nor did the White House.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cobell, Elouise Cobell, Gwen Florio, Harry Reid, Indian trust case, John Boyd Jr., National Black Farmers Association, Native American news, Native American trust case, Pigford