$3.4B Mea Culpa to Tribes Added to Defense Bill

From the Rapid City Journal:

"The U.S. House of Representatives attached a $3.4 billion government settlement with Indian trust beneficiaries to a war-funding bill it passed just before breaking for the July Fourth holiday.

The legislation authorizes the Obama administration to settle the Cobell v. Salazar lawsuit with between 300,000 and 500,000 American Indians. The lawsuit claims the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars held in trust by the government.

The settlement was one of several additions made late Thursday to the bill that authorizes funding for President Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.

The House had already authorized the settlement in May. But last month, it became caught in a Senate filibuster of the Democrats' jobs legislation."

And from the Buffalo Post:

“We expect that the Senate must give prompt and serious consideration to the bill because, without enactment, there are no funds for our war efforts and no funds for FEMA,” plaintiffs attorney Dennis Gingold said Friday. “The bill is too important to this country. Partisan politics must not obstruct passage.”


Gingold credited House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer with moving the settlement authorization forward, calling him a “true champion for individual Indian trust beneficiaries.” Hoyer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Sen. John Barrasso, the vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, has said the settlement should be a stand-alone bill with several changes, such as capping lawyer fees at $50 million.

Barrasso spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the Wyoming Republican was at a funeral Friday and could not immediately comment on the House’s action.

Under the proposed settlement, $1.4 billion would go to individual Indian account holders. Some $2 billion would be used by the government to buy broken-up Indian lands from individual owners willing to sell, and then turn those lands over to tribes. Another $60 million would be used for a scholarship fund for young Indians.

Lawsuit participants would receive at least $1,500, and many would receive considerably more.

Elouise Cobell, the Blackfeet woman from Browning, Mont., who filed the lawsuit in 1996, has urged passage of the settlement, saying it’s long overdue."