Cobell v. Norton Finally Goes To Trial

Cobell v. Norton is a class-action lawsuit filed on June 10, 1996, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to force the federal government to account for billions of dollars belonging to approximately 500,000 American Indians and their heirs, and held in trust since the late 19th century.

The court ruled in 1999 that the secretaries of Interior and Treasury had breached their trust obligations to the Indians and ordered Interior to give a complete accounting of all trust funds. The trial, which began a couple weeks ago, will determine whether Interior can provide a fair and accurate accounting and whether it has corrected the fiduciary breaches the court had previously found.

The litigation involves a long history. Although U.S. policy in the 1870s was to locate Indians on reservations, hunger for the land by non-Indians led to a break-up of most of the reservations starting in the 1880s. Under the Dawes Act, American Indian reservations were divided into individual allotments. The allotments, however, were held in trust by the federal government. Also held in trust was any income from leases on the property. These might include potentially lucrative leases for timber, mining, or grazing rights. This income was held in IIMs (Individual Indian Money Accounts) and paid out as annuities or, in the early days of Indian agencies, drawn on to buy goods.

Thousands of individual Indians generally were allotted beneficial ownership of 80- to 160-acre parcels of land in the break-up. As trustee, the government took legal title to the parcels, established an Individual Indian Trust and thereby assumed full responsibility for management of the trust lands. That included the duty to collect and disburse to the Indians any revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction, timber operations, grazing or similar activities.As a result of more than a century of malfeasance, the United States government has no accurate records for hundreds of thousands of Indian beneficiaries nor of billions of dollars owed the class of beneficiaries covered by the lawsuit.

It doesn’t look good for the Government. 110 years after the recordkeeping began and with the Interior Department destroying 162 boxes of documents they told the court they couldn't find….. well what would you do if you were the judge? You have five hundred thousand American Indians claiming the US government owes them at least $20 billion dollars and the government can't locate the records to prove them wrong.

Anyone belonging to one of the "anti-Indian-what-ever" groups want to compare the volumes of examples of atrocities against the Native American Indian by the Federal Government with what ever rights they perceive they may be losing these days?

Let me know...


Sources:
http://www.indiantrust.com/
http://nativeamericanfirstnationshistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/cobell_v_kempthorne