Individual Indian Money Trust Fund Litigation

Conquest Leaves a Sour Taste

December 8, 2012

. Who’d a thunk it? Five hundred and twenty years of military assault, ethnic cleansing, physical and cultural genocide, theft, lies, deception, dishonor, broken treaties – oh, you can’t even count the number of broken treaties – broken trusts and misappropriation of funds, and nothing seems to work quite right. Things are – how do [...]

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Forty-Five Thousand, Nine Hundred and Fifty Six Days (or Thereabouts)

November 28, 2012

. Many top stories are receiving their usual high levels of attention, from the structural taxation reforms bandied about in the face of the “fiscal cliff” that is really a graded driveway to Israel and Gaza. What receives no attention? The usual, including from among the far left advocates of “peace and justice” who pretend to be [...]

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Conspiracies

October 4, 2012

. I was talking with my class the other day about the methodology of fully-developed conspiracy theories and my general skepticism toward them. The undeveloped conspiracy theory works off a form of radical skepticism. How do you know we really landed on the moon? Have you been witness to any of the reality of the [...]

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In Memory of Elouise Cobell

October 18, 2011

. This blog began in late 2008 to recount my yearlong nationwide travels through Indian Country with documentary photographer Julia Dean. Those travels themselves were inspired by my publication earlier that year of “Aboriginal Sin,” in Tikkun. The article (scroll down for an image link on the right) presented an overview of the historic assault [...]

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Cobell v. Salazar Heads for Settlement after 14 Years

December 3, 2010

This email arrived from Elouise Cobell late yesterday afternoon. As I stated in my last Ask Elouise letter of November 22, 2010, the Senate passed the Cobell Settlement as part of the Claims Resolution Act of 2010. Since that time, I and our Representatives have been advocating for the successful passage of our settlement to [...]

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The End of the Indian Wars: 120 Years and Counting

November 24, 2010

I first wrote about Cobell v. Salazar in Tikkun in March, 2008, when that Individual Trust Fund lawsuit was already 12 years old. Lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell‘s pursuit of an accounting and settlement of land use fees collect in trust by the Department of the Interior since 1887 had met nothing but delay and obstruction [...]

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The Conquest of Native America… Continues

May 28, 2010

One of the favorite argumentative gambits of conservatives and those otherwise unsympathetic to the making of present amends for past national crimes, is just that point – it’s in the past. It’s over. Let it go. And let me tell you something: I didn’t commit any crime. Leaving aside the validity of that argument, which [...]

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Honest Injun

May 11, 2010

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr It can be difficult to assess progress in the movement to recover from the history and consequences of indigenous culturcide. Great symbolic and conceptual achievements are growing. In the former category is the Australian apology to its aboriginal population. In the latter is the 2007 U.N. Declaration on [...]

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Developments in Indian Country

April 30, 2010

The Ninth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues concludes today after eleven days.  Among the documents produced, according to Indian Country Today was a “groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands”: North American Representative to the Permanent Forum Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an attorney and [...]

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Indian Rights, Human Rights

March 26, 2010

I was going to post on Israel today. Recent developments are much in the news (Jeffrey Goldberg is even pausing to consider – “This is big stuff,” he says), and more than is generally the case, there is a sense of urgency, though nothing in particular is about to happen. But this is the point. [...]

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Cobell (Individual Indian Money Trust Fund) Settlement News

February 25, 2010

Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff and driving force behind the now fourteen-year-old Individual Indian Money Trust Fund suit has been issuing periodic reports since news of a settlement of the case back in December. I wrote about it in The Nature of Things. Although the “Ask Elouise” letters, sent to those on the litigation listserv [...]

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The Nature of Things

December 14, 2009

Cobell v. Salazar, the thirteen-year Individual Indian Money Trust Fund litigation, was settled on Friday for $3.4 billion. I have taken some time to sort through reports and my own reaction. The New York Times provided background: The Interior Department now manages about 56 million acres of Indian trust land scattered across the country, with [...]

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The Tribal Nations Conference

November 10, 2009

Reports Indian Country Today, on November 5: “More than 400 members of federally recognized tribes gathered today at the Department of the Interior at a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by President Barack Obama, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Cabinet Members.” This was the largest gathering ever of Native leaders. In Salazar’s and Obama’s [...]

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Good News in the Individual Indian Money Trust Fund Case

July 24, 2009

Heartening news from the Individual Indian Money Trust Fund litigation listserv of today’s appellate decision: Today’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the Indian Trust case makes clear that the government’s duty to account continues and that the government “cannot simply throw up its hands and stop the accounting,” [...]

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“Rough Justice”

May 11, 2009

This released from the Indian Trust ListServ today: WASHINGTON, May 11 — A federal appeals court was told today that it should offer 500,000 Native Americans some form of “rough justice” as a result of the federal government’s acknowledged mismanagement of their trust accounts. Attorney Dennis M. Gingold, who represents the Indians in a 13-year-old [...]

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Important News of the Trust Fund Litigations

April 29, 2009

The email below went out on Monday from Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in Cobell vs Salazar: On Monday, May 11, the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia will hold an important hearing on our case. We will be challenging the Aug. 7 ruling of U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson. He has held [...]

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