by Jodi Rave
The Missoulian
A U.S. Senate committee halted progress Wednesday on a settlement bill that could end 10 years of litigation in a case pitting Native landowners against the federal government – and put billions of dollars of unpaid mineral royalties and land payments into Native hands.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced the Indian Trust Reform Act last July. On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs was set to work out details of the bill. But it was pulled from the committee agenda on Tuesday.
The bill could provide a resolution in the decade-old, class-action lawsuit filed in June 1996 by Elouise Cobell, a banker from Montana’s Blackfeet Nation. The suit, now known as Cobell v. Kempthorne, seeks an historical accounting and trust fund reform for money accounts belonging to 500,000 landowners.
The recent delay in the settlement prompted ire among the bill’s supporters.
“We need to get this settled once and for all,” said Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., in a statement released Wednesday. “I’ve met with Elouise Cobell, and I just met yesterday with the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council. The clear consensus is that we need to get these trust issues resolved. I’m disappointed that we couldn’t move forward with legislation today.”
Burns said he hopes the congressional recess in August will provide an opportunity to “bring the Department of Interior to the table and hammer out an equitable solution.”
Cobell, in a statement Wednesday, said the delay was yet another stall tactic.
It is “unfortunate that the Bush administration refuses to endorse” the efforts of McCain and committee vice chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to reach a fair settlement, she said. “Although the administration has had more than a year to evaluate SB1489 – a bill that would, among other things, resolve the Cobell case – Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez at the 11th hour asked the senators not to mark up the bill as scheduled this morning.”
Kempthorne and Gonzalez asked to use the month of August to work out issues with the proposed settlement act.
McCain’s bill calls for an $8 billion settlement, with 80 percent of that amount to be paid directly to owners of Individual Indian Money accounts as restitution for monetary losses, errors and unpaid interest in their federally managed land accounts.
The Interior Department’s mismanagement at one time was estimated to be as high as $137 billion, money earned by Natives from mineral extraction and leases on their land.
The 2005 Indian Trust Reform Act – similar to the 1994 trust reform act – calls for a sweeping reorganization of how the Interior Department manages land and money resources for tribes and individual Native landowners.
“For too long, we’ve been spending millions of dollars on the ongoing litigation, when those dollars could be better spent funding other important tribal needs – everything from health care to law enforcement to education,” Burns said. “We must keep the momentum going on this, and the time is right to reach a legislative solution to this longstanding inequity.”
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