U.S. Seeks Appeal of Indian Trust Ruling

Elouise Cobell

Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in Indian trust caseCourtesy photo

U.S. Seeks Appeal of Indian Trust Ruling

September 19, 2008

By Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON (AP)—The government has requested an appeal of a judge’s ruling to award American Indian plaintiffs $455 million in a 12-year-old trust case.

The government’s request to appeal comes two weeks after the plaintiffs signaled they would ask for an appeal of the same decision. U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Aug. 7 that the plaintiffs are entitled to $455 million, a fraction of the $47 billion they had sought.

The long-running suit claims the Indians were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.

The government appeal, filed Thursday, contends Robertson’s court does not have the jurisdiction to award the money at all, pointing to his January decision that the task of accounting for the trust money was ultimately impossible.

“If the accounting were indeed impossible, it was not the role of the court to devise an alternate remedy,” the government lawyers wrote.

In 1994, Congress demanded the Interior Department fulfill an obligation to account for money received and distributed. Two years later, when account statements still had not been reconciled, Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana, joined with others in suing.

Because many of the records have been lost or destroyed, it has since been up to the court to decide how to best estimate how much individual Indians should be paid, or how the money should be accounted for.

At issue in the trial’s most recent phase was how much of the royalty money was withheld from the Indian plaintiffs over the years, and whether it was held in the U.S. Treasury at a benefit to the government. Robertson said in his opinion that plaintiffs did not successfully argue that it was.

The plaintiffs argued for more money in their appeal, saying Robertson is too narrowly defining the government’s obligations in managing the Indian trust. The government trust should be treated the same as a private trust, which would have been held to stricter standards, plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

Robertson originally intended to begin a new phase of the trial that would determine how and to whom the government should award the money. But he said at an August status hearing that he would allow appeals now so the process would not be delayed further.

The class-action suit deals with individual Indians’ lands and covers about 500,000 Indians and their heirs. Several tribes have sued separately, claiming mismanagement of their lands.

Mary Clare Jalonick is an Associated Press staff writer.