Skip to main content

Cobell vs DOI

Federal judge promises to set dollar figure on US mismanagement of Indian trust

Brett Murphy at 2:45 PM ET

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/04/federal-judge-promises-to-set-dollar.php

[JURIST] US District Judge James Robertson said Monday in a court hearing that he would set a dollar figure [plaintiffs press release] on the US government's alleged mismanagement of trust funds for a group of some 500,000 Native Americans in a 12-year class action lawsuit [plaintiffs website; JURIST news archive] against the US Department of the Interior [official website]. Plaintiffs led by Eloise Cobell have argued that federal government owes them $58 billion, representing its profits from land use violative of trust terms. Congress established the Indian trust in 1887 to hold proceeds from government-arranged leases of Indian lands. Lawyers for the US government have argued that little trust monies are missing from its accounts and have discouraged Robertson from setting any kind of figure. Robertson has scheduled additional hearings for June, telling the parties in the meantime that "My stewardship of this case will be something with a dollar sign." AP has more.

In an incendiary opinion [text] in 2005, District Court Judge Royce Lamberth required the Interior Department to apologize to the plaintiffs [JURIST report] for its handling of the trust, and to admit that information being provided to them regarding outstanding lost royalties on earnings from Indian land may be unreliable. In 2006, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit removed Lamberth [JURIST report] and reassigned the case to Robertson.

Popular posts from this blog

Americanization of Native Americans

Americanization can refer to the policies of the United States government and public opinion that there is a standard set of cultural values that should be held in common by all citizens. Education was and is viewed as the primary method in the acculturation process. These opinions were harshly applied when it came to Americanization of Native Americans compared to immigrant populations who arrived with their "non-American traditions". The Americanization policies said that when indigenous people learned American customs and values they would soon merge tribal traditions with European-American culture and peacefully melt into the greater society. For example in the 1800s and early 1900s, traditional religious ceremonies were outlawed and it was mandatory for children to attend English speaking boarding schools where native languages and cultural traditions were forbidden. The Dawes Act of 1887 , which allotted tribal lands to individuals and resulted in an estimated total o...
Read more

Indian Boarding Schools - the US Solution to the Indian Problem

American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many by Charla Bear This is the first in a two-part report. For the photos with this piece and the rest of the story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865 May 13, 2008 Col. Richard H. Pratt founded the first of the off-reservation Native American boarding schools based on the philosophy that, according to a speech he made in 1892, "all the Indian there is in the race should be dead." CORBIS 'Kill the Indian...Save the Man' According to Col. Richard Pratt's speech in 1892: "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." From Need to 'National Tragedy' Early in the history of American Indian boarding schools, the...
Read more

UKB and Cherokee Nation Today

Hello, everyone – I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and didn’t overdo too much. It was a foodfest in my neighborhood and it was really fun! In this installment we will bring the story of the UKB and the Cherokee Nation to the present. As the Cherokee Nation began to recover its sovereign powers in the 1970s, after having being squelched for most of the twentieth century by the “bureaucratic imperialism” of the BIA as the judge in the Harjo case described it, the UKB was dwindling. As the Cherokee Nation elected its first Chief since statehood, developed a superseding Constitution, reinstated its citizens, reconstituted its Tribal Council (also a result of the Harjo case), established Cherokee Nation Industries and investigated other economic development enterprises, the UKB receded and was basically defunct by the end of the 1970s. But in 1979, there was a particularly nasty runoff in the Principal Chief’s race between incumbent Ross Swimmer and his opponent, Jim Gordon. Swi...
Read more