Cobell discusses class action lawsuit
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MISSOULA — “I was just tired of it; I just decided I’d sue the government,” Elouise Cobell said, making the audience laugh.
Speaking at the Lessons of Our Land series at the University of Montana Payne Family Native American Center on March 23, Cobell said she had grown tired to trying to get answers, knocking on doors, calling, trying to set up meetings and being stonewalled about Individual Indian Money accounts and accounting procedures. So she hired Dennis Jenko, “the best financial attorney in this country” and filed the largest class action suit in history on June 10, 1996.
According to www.IndianTrust.com, IIM accounts are ”funds collected by the government for farming and grazing leases, timber sales, mining, oil and gas production and other activities on trust land … The funds in IIM accounts are held in trust by the federal government for the benefit of individual Indians.”
Cobell talked about the 15-year duration of the class action suit.
“It was hard,” she said, “and I had no money."
Members from a board Cobell sat on promoting women and girls loaned her $200,000 from their social justice fund and gave her $75,000 to begin the fight. It was a fight, too, Cobell said with dirty tricks, every decision appealed and even claims that Judge Royce Lambert was baised.
“Not one tribe put one penny in,” Cobell said, adding that most tribes did not want to be involved in this high profile case.
Early on in the case, Cobell said the government went to the American Indians with “all the old threats” — pulling the funding for education, roads, etc., but no one backed down.
Cobell wanted three things from the class action suit:
• accounting systems in place for Indian land and money
• accounting to every Individual Indian account
• restitution to individual Indians
And she won.
On Dec. 21, 2010 the District Court for the District of Columbia granted preliminary approval for the settlement while President Obama signed legislation approving the settlement and authorized $3.4 billion in funds on Dec. 8, 2010. A $60 million scholarship fund was set up to assist American Indian students.
Again quoting the www.IndianTrust.com website, “the settlement resolves claims that the federal government violated its trust duties to individual Indian trust beneficiaries.”
During the question and answer period follow Cobell’s remarks, one audience member asked why the settlement is based on the year 1985 to 2009.
Cobell said so many documents were destroyed earlier, and electronic record keeping began in 1985.
Another question dealt with entitlement programs and whether or not a person could lose low-income housing or foodstamps when he or she receives their portion of the settlement.
Entitlements will not be cut off, Cobell said, and we also made sure the settlement money is exempt from federal income tax.
As far as when checks may be issued, Cobell said maybe next spring if all goes according to plan. Checks will go directly to mailboxes, not to IIM accounts she added.
She said she hears from lots of Indian people that it’s not about the money, “you won for our parents and grandparents.”
“This (settlement) is a start,” Cobell noted, “But it doesn’t solve everything in Indian Country.”
