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If anyone has followed this story from the beginning over the years, there is more than enough evidence that (a)billion$ in mineral-rights leases were granted by the BIA on parcels of land for which there is no question that they were held “in trust” by the BIA for various tribal people, and (b)the record keeping of the BIA for those leases was so abysmal that if only sheer incompetence could be prosecuted as a crime, someone would have gone to jail long ago, and (c)the admitted payments of the parties who paid the leases, by itself (if only they could be tracked within the BIAs record keeping - they can’t) is sufficient knowledge, against the paltry sums actually allocated to appropriate tribal interests for the leases, (d) to suggest that the $3.4 billion that is being agreed to now IS PROBABLY LESS than what would have been paid - over the entire period of years covered by the suit, plus the interest that should be due on payments never received.

I remember one of the earlier court rulings in the case admitted all that I noted above but claimed, with the least bit of logic, that the court had no power to demand full payment of what is probably owed, simply because what is probably owed is so much.

I suspect that the tribal parties concerned are accepting the $3.4 billion, to just finally put the case behind them. We are lucky that they are willing to do so.

Will pay them with Obama bucks.. Worth about 2 cents on the dollar.

Note: I wrote most of the following back in 2003, when we had quite a discussion on this topic here on FR. I did a cut-and-paste on my old posts, to create this novel.

I've lived in or near Indian country my whole life, and the business of "tribal sovereignty" has always bothered me. It's a double standard joke. And I absolutely do not believe we should be paying reparations now, for events from centuries past.

All that being said, I think the tribes have a legitimate gripe about this trust fund fiasco. That was pretty much a straight business deal. Oil, gas, and coal companies would sign contracts to run their operations on Indian owned land and to pay royalties in return. The BIA agreed to administer the contracts and manage distributing the money. No federal money went to the tribes in this deal, although the BIA did agree to eat the cost of managing the system.

The BIA was so inept that not only did they not distribute the money properly, they didn't collect it properly either. Instead of managing the contracts and making sure they were paid the correct amounts of royalty money, the BIA evidently just took whatever the mining and drilling companies sent and assumed it was correct. If I'm the owner of an oil company and I owe say 20 million a year in royalties, and then I find out that if I just send in 2 million a year nobody ever says a word about it, you can imagine what happens. I believe that the vast bulk of the missing money was due to this problem of the BIA not auditing payments made against payments due.

This Indian royalty money was tracked for years at the BIA national data processing center in Albuquerque, NM. I think maybe it got yanked back to Washington DC at some point in the 90's, but in was in Albuquerque for a long time. In the early to mid 80's I worked at that data center as part of a contract technical services team. We assisted the BIA technical staff with just about everything they worked with, except one thing: we were never allowed to touch or even see the royalty tracking system.

We never understood why we couldn't see that system, because from what we learned talking to our BIA co-workers, that was the one system we should be looking at. Even back then then it was a disaster, and everyone seemed to know it. I don't remember most of the details, but I remember a couple of the problems. The main job of this system was to account for mineral-extraction royalties paid on Indian owned land, and to distribute that money to the owners. Sometimes the tribe would own all the land, but other times the tribe would own some and individuals would own some.

One thing they had trouble tracking was who owned the land. Ownership would change as the years rolled by and land was passed from one generation to the next, often being chopped up into different size parcels in the process. Different parcels received royalty money based on different contracts, and this got all mixed up.

The one problem that seemed most unique to me had to do with the way they prorated the money based on what percentage Indian blood each person had, and of what tribe. If you were blood-related to more than one tribe, then this system attempted to track your percentage ancestry in each tribe and prorate the royalty money accordingly. And it didn't keep this percentage as a single number for each tribe, that totaled up to 100%. Instead they stored the numerator and denominator for each person for each tribe in separate arrays, and tried to keep up with each new birth by using the numerators and denominators of the parents to generate the data for the child. No one seemed to know where this Rube Goldberg approach originated, but everyone seemed to agree that it was broken beyond repair.

The head of the Dept of Interior and the head of the BIA are both political appointees of course, and I think everyone knew about the problem but nobody wanted it taken care of on their watch - much too ugly. To me, this is not an Indian versus evil white man issue, nor is it a Republican versus Democrat issue. This is an example of government bureaucracy at its very worst, and both parties are at fault.

Heck no! The BIA has stolen from the Indians forever.

I have looked into it and you are correct. The US government totally ripped them off.

What we did to the Indian Nations was unfortunate but necessary at the time. But once the treaties were signed the freking government was obliged to honor their contracts.

But in a perfect example of government stupidity, incompetence, misfeasance, malfeasance and outright thievery the BIA and government looted the trust fund.

The same is true of social security it’s just that we don’t have an enforceable treaty or contract. Good for them.

Yes, I have! I grew up next to one!

They could work anywhere they wanted and because of Affirmative Action they got jobs before non-indians. They ALL got some money from the State and didn't have to live on the “reservation”. Those who chose to live on the “reservation” got a lot more money in addition to free housing on the reservation and or rent assistance if they were off the reservation. They got more than monthly money. They all got paid to breath while we had to work to live and eat! They got free food, free clothing, free health care and free education through university!

The has a Casino. The Chief and some of the tribal elders lived better than we did while others lived in shacks.

I am an enrolled member of a tribe that has been involved in this litigation for 13 years, so I’d to correct a lot of disinformation out there.

1. Each “Account” will receive a cash settlement of $1,000.
2. An account is a plot of land, which was given to each family over 100 years ago. There are about 9-10 members of my family who are all owners of the same plot or “account” so that means we get to all split the $1,000.

This settlement is outrageous since we’ve calculated that the federal government has shorted us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past 100 years in oil and mineral rights and land lease payments that we should have received on a monthly basis but never did due to the crooked bureaucrats in Washington.

Living the tradional life is not my thing, but there are those that feel strongly that it is their obligation to keep the culture alive.

I think that there is a very good argument that the true culture died out with our great-great granfathers. But that being said, your message would be taken with same attitude as a group of Christians being told to give up their religion because the time for religion has passed.

There are many things holding people to the reservations. There is a sense that leaving is an insult to the ancestors. There is a feeling among the poorest people in the nation that if they leave the rez, they will leave the only thing they actually own. And it is hard to leave every body and everything you know for a culture that doesn’t particularly like or trust you.

Think about Obama taking your house to build windmills, he offers you a smaller replacement house but offers a stipend to make up the difference. Then after taking your house, he puts you in Detroit and doesn’t pay the money.

I misspoke. It's not a shakedown by American Indians. Indians have more than this due from mineral royalties. The shakedown is via the Department of the Interior and its bureaucrats who f**k up everything they come into contact with. Having worked in the coal industry in the 70s and 80s, I know many of us felt like Interior had painted a big bulls-eye on our industry with the federalization of mining law.

This best thing my grandfather ever did was walk off the rez and make sure his children were never on the rolls. Our family has done well, my cousins are living like Bangladesh on the reservation

Your family has "done well" because your g/father found the only cure for poverty - get as far away from government dependency as possible.

I've seen the reservations in the north/north west and west, haven't seen any of the more eastern ones but they are probably the same, just as you described,"Bangladesh on the reservation."

It's the same fate liberals had/have in mind for black people - keep them government dependent and poor and ignorant and they will vote for liberals who promise more hand outs.

I've never been to Puerto Rico but hear that it is the same way there.

Thank your g/father if he's still living, for your freedom.

“Wow, 3.4 billion will buy a LOT of fire water...”

Sterotyping, but maybe not too far off. I doubt that much of it will go into 401(k)s.

How is it a shakedown when the feds control access and mineral rights, get money for the oil pumped up, then fail at the simplist bookkeeping task and fail to keep track of what land earned what, or fail to pay the land holders that they forced to accept federal trust status? This whole case started because a woman wanted to get paid the oil royalties she was due and the feds said what money?

No I think they were claiming and the court agree something in the 20+ billion range during bush one.

I vow to never step foot in foot in one of their casinos ... EVER.

Reparations precedent.

Not in this case, the federal government has been playing fast and lose with this for years.

“Have you ever walked a rez?

There are a few tribes that hit it big with the casinos but most people on the reservations live in poverty like nobody else in this country knows.

This best thing my grandfather ever did was walk off the rez and make sure his children were never on the rolls. Our family has done well, my cousins are living like Bangladesh on the reservation. The feds put them on welfare using rifles and cannons then left them to starve like animals.

These lawsuits are based on legal contracts that the Feds did not fulfill in an ethical manor.”

So what's holding them on the reservation? Are they not allowed to leave? Are they not allowed to get an education or get a job or start their own business?

I'm not trying to be rude but I think this says more about the people that choose to stay there and live in poverty than the government that established the reservations in the first place. If they are living in poverty, it's there own doing not anyone Else's. Kudos to your grandfather and your family to take charge of their lives and reap the benefits of freedom in this country.

The government will pay them in the form of tax deductions on the billions they are making at the casinos.

Have you ever walked a rez?

There are a few tribes that hit it big with the casinos but most people on the reservations live in poverty like nobody else in this country knows.

This best thing my grandfather ever did was walk off the rez and make sure his children were never on the rolls. Our family has done well, my cousins are living like Bangladesh on the reservation. The feds put them on welfare using rifles and cannons then left them to starve like animals.

These lawsuits are based on legal contracts that the Feds did not fulfill in an ethical manor.

Aint that the truth!