Cobell v. Salazar
Cobell v. Salazar (previously Cobell v. Kempthorne and Cobell v. Norton and Cobell v. Babbitt) is a class-action lawsuit brought by Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) and other Native American representatives in 1996 against two departments of the United States government: the Department of Interior and the Department of the Treasury for mismanagement of Indian trust funds. It was settled in 2009. The plaintiffs claim that the U.S. government has incorrectly accounted for the income from Indian trust assets, which are legally owned by the Department of the Interior, but held in trust for individual Native Americans (the beneficial owners). The case was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The original complaint asserted no claims for mismanagement of the trust assets, since such claims could only properly be asserted in the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Cobell v. Salazar
The case is sometimes reported as the largest class-action lawsuit against the U.S. in history, but this is disputed. Plaintiffs contend that the number of class members is around 500,000, while defendants maintain it is closer to 250,000. The potential liability of the U.S. government in the case is also disputed: plaintiffs have suggested a figure as high as $176 billion, and defendants have suggested a number in the low millions, at most.
The case was settled for $3.4 billion in 2009. $1.4 billion was allocated to be paid to the plaintiffs and $2 billion allocated to repurchase fractionated land interests from those distributed under the Dawes Act and to return it to reservations and communal tribal ownership. In addition, a scholarship fund for Native American and Alaska Native students was created, to be funded from purchase of fractionated lands. It is named the Cobell Educational Scholarship Fund in honor of lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, who filed suit against the government in 1996 and persisted with the case until settlement. The scholarship fund has a cap of $60 million; $40 million had been contributed to the fund by November 2016.[1]
By November 2016, the Department of Interior had paid $900 million to individual landholders for the fair market value of their fractionated lands, and transferred an estimated 1.7 million acres to tribal reservations for communal use.[1] As more reservations are participating in the program, the pace of buy back has increased.
Early Federal Indian trust law[edit]
The history of the Indian trust is inseparable from the larger context of the Federal government's relationship with American Indians, and its policies as that relationship evolved. At its core, the Indian trust is an artifact of a nineteenth-century Federal policy.[2] Its late 20th-century form bore the imprint of subsequent policy evolution.[3]
During the late 1800s, Congress and the Executive branch believed that the best way to foster assimilation of Indians was to "introduce among the Indians the customs and pursuits of civilized life and gradually absorb them into the mass of our citizens."[4] Under the "General Allotment Act of 1887" (the Dawes Act), communal tribal lands were divided and assigned to heads of households as individually owned parcels 40–160 acres (0.16–0.65 km2) in size. The Dawes Rolls are the records of the members of each tribe who were registered by government representatives at the time. The total land area that was allotted was small compared to the amount of land that had been held communally by tribes in their reservations at the passage of the Act. The government declared Indian lands remaining after allotment as "surplus" and opened them for non-Indian settlement, resulting in the loss of millions of acres of tribal lands.
Section 5 of the Dawes Act required the United States to "hold the land thus allotted, for the period of twenty-five years, in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made…" During the trust period, individual accounts were to be set up for each Indian with a stake in the allotted lands, and the lands would be managed for the benefit of the individual allottees. Indians could not sell, lease, or otherwise encumber their allotted lands without government approval. Where the tribes resisted allotment, it could be imposed. After twenty-five years, the allotted lands would become subject to taxation. Many allottees did not understand the tax system, or did not have the money to pay the taxes, and lost their lands at that time.