Wampum

The following is an interesting institutional development, but it is unlikely to involve Eastern or Southern or Western or Alaskan (or Hawai'ian) claims that arise from the American claim of a Trust relationship towards Tribes.

HISTORIC UNION OF NATIVE AMERICAN LEADERS TO RELEASE
SETTLEMENT PRINCIPLES FOR
TRUST REFORM AND RESOLUTION OF COBELL V. NORTON

WHEN: Monday, June 20, 2005 at 1:30 PM Eastern

WHERE: National Press Club
13th Floor, Murrow Room
529 14th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

WHAT: Prominent national Native American leaders will join the lead plaintiff in the landmark Cobell v. Norton case to announce a set of principles intended to be the basis of legislation that could end the contentious, nine-year court battle over the government’s breach of its fiduciary duty to account for the property of individual Indians, held in trust and managed by the government.

NCAI President Tex G. Hall, and ITMA Chairman Chief Jim Gray of the Osage Nation joined with Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the watershed Cobell lawsuit, and formed a national working group that developed these Principles that also would reform the government's trust practices that affect hundreds of Indian tribes.

In the course of the Cobell proceedings, cabinet secretaries of both parties have been held in contempt. A settlement would avoid accounting costs that the government claims could total $14 billion. The trust funds belong to an estimated 500,000 individual Indians – monies that are the proceeds from the government's sale and lease of resources from the Indians' own lands. The courts and Congress have found that the government has mismanaged the trust for over a century, breached its duty, and never accounted for the monies in the trust. This lack of accounting and trust mismanagement continues today.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), vice-chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), chairman of the House Resources Committee, and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), ranking member of the House Resources Committee, have asked Indian Country to speak with a unified voice and provide a set of principles that would guide the lawmakers' drafting of legislation that would provide a fair and just resolution to this most critical issue facing Native Americans. They have said they plan to introduce such legislation this summer. The legislation would reform the federal government's inept Indian trust management system.

WHO: Tex G. Hall, "Red Tipped Arrow",� President of National Congress of American Indians and Chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota

Jim Gray, Chairman of the Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association and Principal Chief of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma

Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, founder and Executive Director of the Native American Community Development Corporation and a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana

Sharon Clahchischilliage, Executive Director of the Navajo Nation Washington, D.C. office

John Echohawk, Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund and a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.