U.S. Will Settle Native American Suit for $3.4 Billion
December 11th, 2009Via: New York Times:
The federal government announced on Tuesday that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds, potentially ending one of the largest and most complicated class-action lawsuits ever brought against the United States.
The tentative agreement, reached late Monday, would resolve a 13-year-old lawsuit over hundreds of thousands of land trust accounts that date to the 19th century. Specialists in federal tribal law described the lawsuit as one of the most important in the history of legal disputes involving the government’s treatment of American Indians.
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The dispute arises from a system dating to 1887, when Congress divided many tribal lands into parcels — most from 40 to 160 acres — and assigned them to individual Indians while selling off remaining lands.
The Interior Department now manages about 56 million acres of Indian trust land scattered across the country, with the heaviest concentration in Western states. The government handles leases on the land for mining, livestock grazing, timber harvesting and drilling for oil and gas. It then distributes the revenue raised by those leases to the American Indians. In the 2009 fiscal year, it collected about $298 million for more than 384,000 individual Indian accounts.
The lawsuit accuses the federal government of mismanaging that money. As a result, the value of the trusts has been unclear, and the Indians contend that they are owed far more than what they have been paid.
Under the settlement, the government would pay $1.4 billion to compensate the Indians for their claims of historical accounting irregularities and any accusation that federal officials mismanaged the administration of the land itself over the years.
Each member of the class would receive a check for $1,000, and the rest of the money would be distributed according to the land owned. In addition, legal fees, to be determined by a judge, would be paid from that fund.
Philip Frickey, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in federal Indian law, said that of all the Indian land claims and other lawsuits over the past generation, the trust case had been a “blockbuster” because it is national in scope, involves a large amount of money, and has been long-running.
The lawsuit spanned three presidencies and engendered seven trials covering 192 trial days, generated 22 published judicial opinions, and went before a federal appeals court 10 times.
At least a decision has been rendered in favor of the native Indians of this nation. I’ve been listening to this story for a long time and have been so disturbed.
The government handles leases on the land for mining, In the 2009 fiscal year, it collected about $298 million for more than 384,000 individual Indian accounts.
My trusty calculator at this moment in history, can’t handle the calculation. 2009-1887 = 122 years x’s 289,000,000 mil per year (I think that’s got to be a low ball figure on what was actually earned off of tribal lands.)
My hand math says that 122×298,000,000= 37,560,000,000. Its too late for me to figure out whether my math is right. Whether the math is correct is not really at issue for me. Its just that the native Americans have been ripped off since the day our white skins landed on these shores. I’ve talked with a few during my travels for work, and I’ve seen how some native Americans live near the Grand Canyon. I bow my head in shame for what has been done.
One of the best things about this long litigation is that it exposed Jack Abramoff.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/ref/abramoff.php
What kharma this man must burn to enter Nirvana.
Long, slow, roasting fire.