Kevin Abourezk's blog

A federal judge has approved the $3.4 billion Cobell v. Salazar settlement, sparking a nationwide search for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans whose names have been lost by the government.

Two weeks after President Obama signed the settlement, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan granted it preliminary approval this week. The settlement of the 15-year-old suit brought by lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell provides compensation to nearly 600,000 Natives for the government's mismanagement of their trust fund assets.

Dennis Gingold, the lead plaintiffs’ attorney, said the government currently has the correct names and addresses for only half of the Native Americans potentially eligible for benefits. He said the plaintiffs would conduct a vigorous search for eligible beneficiaries.

Two firms with experience in finding members of large class-action lawsuits, Kinsella Media and The Garden City Group, will begin immediately the search process with a $20 million payment from the settlement funds, according to the plaintiffs. The judge also designated J.P. Morgan as the qualified bank to handle disbursement of the funds, after the judge learned no Native American bank was large enough to handle the settlement.

Gingold recommended J.P. Morgan, noting its work disbursing a multimillion dollar settlement involving tobacco companies.

"It's clear that both sides agree that it's a fair and reasonable settlement," Judge Hogan said.

Hogan said all settlement hearings will be open to the public and all letters and communication with the judge will be entered into the public record of the case.

A "fairness hearing" on the adequacy of proposed disbursements from the fund was tentatively set for June 20. Hogan set the end of an opt-out period in which individual Indian beneficiaries may seek a separate settlement with the government for April 20. The formal notification period is expected to begin Jan. 20, the judge said.

Kevin Abourezk is serving as an editor for the NAPT Multimedia Fellowship Program, a service of Native American Public Telecommunications Inc. with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

A grassroots Native organization that recruits and supports Indian candidates is closing its doors after failing to gain sponsors.

INDN’s List began in 2005 as a way to get more Indian candidates elected throughout the country. President Kalyn Free announced Monday the organization was closing shop.

“In 2009 and 2010, I personally financially supported INDN’s List and paid most of our overhead and salaries,” she said. “Regrettably, we have simply been unable to expand our donor base beyond a handful of visionary tribes, unions and individuals.

“As we say goodbye to another year, we also say goodbye to INDN’s List.”

Even those tribes who initially supported INDN’s List have failed in the last two years to keep providing support, Free said. She thanked those who volunteered to help INDN’s List and financially supported the group.

She said INDN’s List has helped Indian candidates win 63 elections and, up until this previous election, had won 70 percent of the races in which it had candidates. Free lamented the loss in November of 15 Native candidates, including seven incumbents, out of 27 endorsed by INDN’s List.

Still, she said, the organization has helped Indians win offices in chambers where Native people have never served and was instrumental in holding caucuses on reservations for the first time in a presidential primary in Nevada. INDN’s List also has trained hundreds of political volunteers and cast a spotlight on the need for Indians in public office, Free said.

“I have always said, ‘Little Indian boys and girls cannot be what they cannot see,’” she said. “I am most proud that INDN’s List played a role in giving future generations of Indian children concrete examples of what they can be.”

Those examples include: Claudia Kauffman, the only Indian woman serving in the Washington Senate; Al McAffrey, the first openly gay man elected to the Oklahoma House; Denise Juneau, the first Indian woman to hold statewide office in Montana; and Barbara McIlvaine Smith, the first Indian in the Pennsylvania House. 

“My dream of seeing the first Indian woman in Congress, an Indian governor and ultimately an Indian president lives on,” Free said. “They are all out there, somewhere. And maybe, just maybe, INDN’s List has helped show them the way.”

Kevin Abourezk is serving as an editor for the NAPT Multimedia Fellowship Program, a service of Native American Public Telecommunications Inc. with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

President Barack Obama announced Thursday at the White House Tribal Nations Conference that his administration will support the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The announcement removes the United States as the only remaining developed country that had not yet embraced the declaration, which recognizes and protects the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and protection of their lands and resources, among other rights.

“The aspirations it affirms – including the respect for the institutions and rich cultures of Native peoples – are one we must always seek to fulfill,” Obama said.

Tribal leaders had long urged Obama to support the declaration. However, Obama said Thursday, his administration will focus on action rather than words in its dealings with tribes in the coming years.

He presented a number of his administration’s accomplishments over the past two years, including boosting investment in tribal roads and offering new loans to improve broadband service to reservations. He also lauded passage last year of health care reform legislation, which permanently authorized the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. That legislation will help tribes purchase health care for their employees and make affordable coverage more available to Indians.

Passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act will help tribes combat drug and alcohol abuse and have greater access to criminal databases, Obama said. And, just a week after signing the $3.4 billion Cobell v. Salazar settlement, Obama thanked those who steered passage of the settlement by Congress.

“We’re very proud of that and I want to thank all the legislators who helped make that happen,” he said of the settlement. “This will put more land in the hands of tribes to manage or otherwise benefit their members.”

By Kevin Abourezk

RAPID CITY, S.D. – The National Congress of American Indians voted Wednesday to approve a resolution calling for immediate passage of the Cobell v. Salazar settlement by Congress.

NCAI’s resolution did not call for supporting a controversial amendment to the settlement offered by Sen. John Barasso, R-Wyo., that would cap attorneys’ fees at $50 million rather than up to $100 million as the settlement proposes.

“I was happy to see that NCAI threw out the Barasso amendment,” said Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit.

The settlement calls for $1.4 billion to class members for redress of trust mismanagement and accounting claims and $2 billion to purchase and consolidate fractionated Indian land. The settlement also would set aside $60 million for a Native American scholarship fund.

The House voted to approve the deal just before Memorial Day, and the Senate is continuing to consider H.R. 4213, the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, which includes the Cobell settlement.

The resolution approved Wednesday during NCAI’s Mid-Year Conference in Rapid City, S.D., also called for tribal participation in the $2 billion land consolidation program and for “fairness in attorney fees and incentive payments to ensure that they do not unduly diminish the restitution to individual account holders.”

“The Cobell settlement is the first step in resolving longstanding trust mismanagement claims and moving forward on substantive reforms to the future of the trust land system,” the NCAI resolution reads.

Cobell opposed the NCAI resolution on Wednesday, saying she worried the changes it recommended to the settlement could end the settlement, forcing the plaintiffs to return to court.

“That could kill the settlement,” she said of changes to the settlement. “We’re very careful about that.”

Earlier during the conference, Kimberly Teehee, White House senior policy advisor for Native American Affairs, said any significant change to the settlement would render it null and void.

She suggested tribal leaders with concerns over the settlement present those concerns to the court in Cobell v. Salazar after Congress approves the settlement.

“This is becoming an emotional issue,” TeeHee said of the Cobell settlement. “No one gets everything they ask for.”

The NCAI resolution called for other changes to the settlement, including:

• Oversight to ensure Indian landowners are treated fairly under the settlement.

• Consideration of environmental damages to Indian lands and remediation of environmental damages.

• Impartial administration of the $60 million scholarship fund.

• Separate legislation to restore tribal control over land management and land consolidation.

The new deadline for Congressional action on the settlement that Indian plaintiffs involved in Cobell v. Salazar have agreed to is July 9.

Cobell said she filed the Indian trust lands lawsuit on behalf of individual Indian land account holders and not tribes, which had failed to act on the federal government’s failed trust accounting system. She said she opposed tribes now trying to get involved in the litigation.

“They could jeopardize the settlement,” she said of tribes. “I feel that what’s in the settlement is fair.”

But Mary Lee Johns, an Indian landowner and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member, said it’s important for tribes to take a stand on the settlement as they will be affected by its stipulations, especially the fractionated land program.

She said she has long opposed the Cobell litigation because it separates individual tribal members from tribes, a process that the federal government started by dividing up Indian lands among individual tribal members.

“I’m very satisfied, very happy that this gave us an opportunity to let our voices be heard,” Johns said.

Kevin Abourezk serves as an editor for the NAPT Multimedia Fellowship Program, a service of Native American Public Telecommunications Inc. with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To learn more, visit nativetelecom.org.