SANTA FE, NM-- Elousie Cobell, who has led a nine-year court fight that is forcing the federal government to give an estimated 500,000 American Indians a full accounting of what has happened to their government-controlled individual Indian Trust accounts, is one of five winners of Cultural Freedom Fellowships awarded by the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe.
The foundation has announced that it is giving a total of $675,000 to support the work of anti-globalization activist Maude Barlow of Canada; book publishers Bobby Byrd and Lee Merrill Byrd of the United States; journalist Amira Hass of Israel and Montana banker Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Nation.
The cultural freedom fellowship program is designed to recognize individuals whose work inspires their communities, domestic and international, that are struggling to uphold and defend their right to cultural freedom and diversity. This support is intended to encourage and enhance the recipients' efforts to advance the cause of cultural freedom, a basic human right dependent on political, economic, and environmental justice. The money provided with the fellowship may be used for travel, study, research, or other similar purposes.
According to foundation president J. Patrick Lannan, Jr., "These fellowship recipients are inspiring examples of the kinds of people who keep hope alive, who again and again remind us of the necessity to struggle always for freedom and cultural diversity."
A banker from Browning, Montana, Cobell is the lead plaintiff in one of the largest class action lawsuits against the United States government, for breach of its trust duties to thousands of individual Native Americans.
Her Cobell vs. Norton lawsuit is an on-going legal attempt to force the U.S. Department of the Interior to fix its accounting system and properly account for billions of dollars it manages on behalf of individual Indians.
“Ms. Cobell's persistence in bringing the charges to trial has shone a bright light on more than a century of government malfeasance and dishonesty. Indeed, the District Court Judge presiding over the case called the government's mismanagement of the funds "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form," the Lannan Foundation said in announcing the award.
Ms. Cobell is the Executive Director of the Native American Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit affiliate of Native American Bank. She also served as Chairperson for the Blackfeet National Bank, the first national bank located on an Indian reservation and owned by a Native American tribe. Ms. Cobell was one of the lead organizers of the bank and was instrumental in the formation of the Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund.
A member of the Blackfeet Indian Nation, Ms. Cobell served for thirteen years as the tribe's treasurer. In addition to operating a working ranch with her husband, she is active in local agriculture and environmental issues.
Previous recipients of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship are Subhankar Banerjee, a photographer and cultural rights activist from Seattle who works to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Julian Cardona, a photojournalist from Mexico who documents the life of Mexican migrants and residents of Juarez; and John Fogarty and Lucy Boulanger, physicians from New Mexico who work for the protection of Native American land and water rights.
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contact: Bill McAllister 703 385-6996
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