The Cobell lawsuit Essay

The Cobell lawsuit was first filed in 1996 and has since endured numerous presidential regimes. (Martin, 2016). The Cobell case has gone by a number of titles over the years, including Cobell v. Babbit, Cobell v. Kempthorne, Cobell v. Norton, and Cobell v. Salazar at the moment. Due to the presence of roughly 500,000 plaintiffs, the Cobell lawsuit has been referred to as the biggest class action case against America in US history. (Martin, 2016). Eloise Cobell brought the lawsuit, which was about the results of more than a century of offensive federal Indian policy and general negligence in the administration of the Indian trust lands. Eloise Cobell was a Blackfoot Indian who was a banker from Montana. She filed the case on behalf of Indians in 1996 after detecting irregularities in the management of revenues realized from lands that the United States held in trust when she was working as Blackfoot tribe treasurer.

Many tribes have been involved in this case in one way or the other, either as witnesses, plaintiffs or any other position. These tribes include Blackfoot tribe, the Indian community, Confederate tribes, Quapaw tribe, and Fort Peck tribe and among others (Stivers, 2017). The sovereignty of the Indian people has been affected by the land lease. In the federal Indian law, the principles according to the doctrine of discovery explain that Indians have only occupancy rights but not title to their lands. The United States was, therefore, held in trust for these lands. In trying to assimilate Indians into the mainstream America culture, the Dawes Act was committed in 1887 (Martin, 2016). The act changed from the communal property of land by tribes to personal allotments which were held in trust within a time span of 25 years. After this period there was the issuance of a patent in fee to allow people to sell their lands if they wanted, and the intention was finally broken by the reservation. However, the plan never succeeded.

Over the decades, the initial allotments have been transferred to the subsequent generation due to deaths of the original owners. As a result, a distribution which was previously controlled by an individual is currently held by many people. The allotments have been made useless because to develop them there has to be a 51% approval by all the owners (Stivers, 2017). The segmented allotments are still managed by the United States, and the owners are assigned Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts were the revenue generated from the lease is channeled. However, the presence of numerous IIM accounts has made accounting extremely challenging and highly costly.

Contrary to the agreement that the revenue realized from the lease paid to the individual land owners and the Indian tribes, the United States has failed to give an accurate account of the income generated and this is what led to the lawsuit. Nevertheless, after more than 15 years since the case was filed, a settlement was arrived at in 2010 which was valued at $3.4 billion (Stivers, 2017). The settlement had three parts: $1.5 billion was set aside for an Accounting/Trust Administration fund credited to IIM accounts; $60 million is allocated for scholarships to improve Indians entry in higher education (Stivers, 2017). For the remaining $1.9 billion, a Trust Land Consolidation fund was created to give funds to tribal governments to be used in bringing back the allotments to one communally owned land again. Moreover, the funds are utilized by the ethnic administrations to buy individual fractionated interests.

References

Martin, R. (2016). Defending the Cobell buy-back program. Am. Indian L. Rev., 41, 91.

Stivers, C. (2017). Elouise Cobell and the Indian trust funds: Accountability and trust in public administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 39(2), 157-169.