Great article on an important class action lawsuit brought by Native Americans against the United States government -- the injustices that led to it and questions about how much injustice remains uncompenasated despite the settlement:
In December 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law a $3.4 billion settlement to end a 14-year-old class-action suit against the federal government. Cobell v. Salazar accused the government of mismanaging income earned from leasing out 11 million acres of reservation land. Elouise Cobell, a banker from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, filed suit in 1996 after noticing inconsistencies in paying landowners the lease income they were due. In other words: Indians were getting ripped off.
When announcing the settlement in December 2009, President Obama said, “With this announcement, we take an important step toward a sincere reconciliation between the trust beneficiaries and the federal government, and lay the foundation for more effective management of Indian trust assets in the future.”
Cobell is less sanguine. “This is significantly less than the full benefit to which Indians are entitled,” she said. “We are compelled to settle now by the sobering realization that our class grows smaller every year, every day, as our elders die.”
via www.inthesetimes.com