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Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the Indian Trust lawsuitCourtesy photo
The $7 Billion Offer That Never Was
WASHINGTON — Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the Indian Trust lawsuit, has complained that some news accounts have incorrectly stated that the plaintiffs once rejected a $7 billion offer from the government to settle the Indian Trust lawsuit.
“That simply isn’t true,” she said in a statement sent to news media and posted at her Indian Trust Web site. Her statement singled out The Associated Press for spreading the misinformation.
“The government has never offered to settle the Cobell vs. Kempthorne lawsuit at any price,” said Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation from Browning, Mont. “Every proposal made by plaintiffs and by mediators to settle the case has been rejected by the government.”
Much of the confusion in the media stems from March 2007, she said. The Bush administration then suggested it was willing to spend $7 billion over 10 years to resolve a wide range of major Indian issues, including fractional land claims, the Cobell suit, all individual land mismanagement claims, the 100 plus trust lawsuits filed by tribes. The amount would pay for all trust reform as well.
“Oh, yes, and it also included provisions to deny Indians any right to bring any future lawsuits for future mismanagement no matter how egregious,” she said. “That final provision was essentially a license to steal.”
“This proposal was universally condemned by everyone not associated with the government, including a wide range of Native leaders,” Cobell added.
Moreover, Cobell said, the Bush idea “never went beyond conceptual testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. And it contained no specific amount to settle the Cobell litigation.”
In her testimony before the committee, Cobell said the figure was insufficient to settle her case alone. “This is not an offer — instead, it is a slap in the face for every individual [with] trust fund litigation,” she said.
She did note that a mediator had suggested recoveries could run between $7 billion to $9 billion in her lawsuit case. She said she “would want to talk about that more.” That was “hardly a rejection,” she said.
The Bush administration never followed up on her overture.
In 2006, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee did introduce legislation to settle the lawsuit without a specific dollar amount. The committee later amended that bill to include an $8 billion figure, but the bill never moved out of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee because of objections raised by the Bush administration, Cobell said.
“Lawyers for the Justice Department and the Interior Department have made clear throughout the Cobell litigation that the government’s firm position is that the Individual Indian Money (IIM) Trust is not a real trust and that Indians are owed nothing no matter how much money and other assets are missing or have been looted from the trust,” Cobell stated.
“The position of the Cobell plaintiffs has long been that we will consider reasonable offers from the United States to resolve this case,” she said. “Unfortunately, none has been put forth.”
http://reznetnews.org/article/individual-indian-money/%247-billion-offer-never-was
Filed under: Indigenous, Shundahai Network Blog, enivornment | Tagged: The $7 Billion Offer That Never Was
