Spokane7
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February 25, 2012 in Idaho
Colville Tribes’ land suit settled
Portion of $193 million from federal government will go to forest restoration
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation have agreed to accept a $193 million settlement offer from the federal government for decades of mismanagement of tribal trust funds and income-generating assets.
The settlement ranks among the largest payouts for Indian trust-mismanagement cases in U.S. history, according to Michael Finley, chairman of the Colville Tribes’ business council. The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to approve the settlement within the next two weeks, according to a news release from the tribe.
In 2005, the Colville Tribes sued the federal government, alleging mismanagement of payments from timber sales, agriculture and grazing leases and mining claims on tribal trust lands. The income was supposed to be invested on behalf of the Colville Tribes, but the tribe never received an accounting of the money, the suit said.
The Colville Tribes’ lawsuit parallels Cobell v. Norton, which alleged that Native American families were denied billions of dollars in royalties over the past century. That class-action suit, filed by a Blackfeet woman named Elouise Cobell in 1996, revealed massive and longstanding problems with federal oversight of Indian trust funds. The Cobell case, however, deals with payments to individual tribal members, not lands held in trust for the tribes.
Finley could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon but issued a statement:
“The council is pleased that the United States stepped forward to compensate the Colville Tribes for losses suffered through its mismanagement of our resources. It’s gratifying to know that the federal government, specifically this administration, is willing to repay (the) tribes, at least in part, for the damages we’ve suffered to resolve these longstanding claims.”
Some of the Colville Tribes’ settlement will be used to restore tribal forests and rangeland on the 1.4 million-acre reservation, according to the release. A portion of the settlement will be distributed to the tribes’ 9,000-plus members through ongoing per-capita payments.
The tribes’ council, members and employees are meeting to develop a long-term plan for using the money.
During the 1990s, the federal government hired accounting firm Arthur Anderson to try to reconcile discrepancies in the Colville Tribes’ trust fund accounts from 1972 to 1992, but tribal officials did not accept its report.
The Colville Tribes arrived at the $193 million settlement with the government by demonstrating “how mismanagement of Colville Tribes’ natural resources resulted in significant monetary damages,” the news release said.
The Colville Tribes’ lawsuit is one of several dozen tribal trust suits that have been pending in federal court.
Other tribes are expected to announce settlements in the near future.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Caribou habitat costs studied 
greenlibertarian2nd on February 25 at 12:56 a.m.
During the 1990s, the federal government hired accounting firm Arthur Anderson to try to reconcile discrepancies in the Colville Tribes’ trust fund accounts from 1972 to 1992, but tribal officials did not accept its report.
Right. The company that was cooking Enron’s books during that time. The company that disappeared/disbanded, after being a Big 5 accountancy company. Major VALUES fail!
The system’s rigged, people.
Been trying to tell ya, big gov., big business don’t work, no in any way, “fairly”.
Nor “competitively”, ha ha.
That’s long gone.
dataxman on February 25 at 4:57 a.m.
Unless the Tribes and their members believe they are too uneducated or incompetetent to manage their resources, All Trust land should be returned to the Tribes and/or Tribal members.
oneanddone on February 25 at 6:13 a.m.
“A portion of the settlement will be distributed to the tribes’ 9,000-plus members through ongoing per-capita payments.”
Well! This is coming at just the right time, considering the fact that now private enterprise has entered the hard liquor market. There will be such stores popping up all around these “tribal lands.”
rosehips on February 25 at 6:40 a.m.
nice, oneanddone.
feel better to get your bottled up racist resentment released?
dataxman on February 25 at 6:53 a.m.
Not to feed oneanddone rants - but under the new rules Tribes will be exempt from paying the liquor taxes included in the privatization law
rosehips on February 25 at 6:56 a.m.
dataxman, does oneanddone ever return to rant? Or does he/she reflect what his/her name implies?
I think the only consolation is that we only have to read one comment from that fool.
rosehips on February 25 at 6:57 a.m.
lol, I bet oneanddone didn’t realize that when he/she voted for privatization…
D Statler on February 25 at 7:36 a.m.
Creating jobs for their members and providing scholarships for their young. Please use this wisely friends.
Notapatriot on February 25 at 7:37 a.m.
When are these people ever going to quit being a group intense on finding ways to suckle at the teet of a government they despise in a country they ostensibly hate all the while whining about their condition all the while enjoying the fruits of its non-Indian citizens efforts? It’s the proverbial having it both ways. How about if they quit being Native Americans and just be Americans? How about we just abolish this laughable reservation business (Kalispel sovereign land in Airway Heights?) and just be American Citizens and pay taxes and make a living off non-vice enterprises.
$193 mil won’t satisfy anyone for long. A hundred more tribes will now just get in line with the paperwork while this country goes to hell in a handbag.
rosehips on February 25 at 7:41 a.m.
not, how bout we give all the land back to the tribes and call it good? Then you can pay them to live on their land.
RedCedar on February 25 at 9:47 a.m.
Say what you will about Indians “intense” on sucking on the government “teet”, but every time one of these big-money settlements is reached, it puts an ended to a long-running contentious issue. The Indians might blow all the money wastefully. They might spend it to build some grand edifice of a government building of some sort that ends up disintegrating for lack of maintenance. They ruling families on the rez might distribute it to their own members and leave the unpopular families out. The catch with having the tribes be autonomous “nations” is that they can do that if they want and tribal members who are treated unfairly can’t do much about it unless they can afford to bring a suit in federal court. It’s also quite possible that most of the money will be used for worthwhile things.
None of that is really relevant, however. The settlement is compensation for “mismanagement of tribal trust lands”. You can go back to Lt H.H. Pierce’s 1880s “Account of an Expedition from Ft Colville to Puget Sound” and read the choice words he had for the Indian agent in Okanogan at the time. The gist of it is that the man was nowhere near his “office” and had been basically pocketing the money he got for leasing out tribal lands, as well as much of what he got from the government to distribute to the Indians. Over the years, the fraud got more sophisticated, but in general, whether it was grazing leases on the Colville reservation or timber sales on the Quinault reservation, the Indian agents (or whatever they’re called now) did a very poor job of taking care of the Great White Chief’s little red children. Reservation resources were routinely used for the benefit of well-connected white men, with little of the proceeds accruing to the people who ostensibly owned the land.
I have no idea how accurate the $193 million figure is, but it’s probably within an order of magnitude of being right. The payment is basically for damages done by the federal government to the tribe. As such, it doesn’t matter what the tribe ends up doing with the money. Think of it this way. Say I run into your car and destroy it. I pay you $500 for having wrecked your beautiful 1986 Buick.sedan. You take the money and buy a bag of dope and smoke it. Do I have any right to complain that you wasted the money I gave you for your car? My $500 wasn’t a charitable donation to you. It was compensation for the damage I did to you. There’s a big difference.
rosehips on February 25 at 11:02 a.m.
Thanks for that, red.
racepony on February 25 at 1:33 p.m.
Plenty of misinformed non-Indians here. First you need to become educated about Tribes and its governments before you start ranting and raving about what you think you know. Anyone ever hear about Treaties? Its that legal document that the United States entered into with American Indians. Accordingly those legal provisions, the Indians agreed to settle, to have its lands, its self governance, to set aside its lively hood for guaranteed rights, one of these was to ensure trust responsibility of the federal government. Indians did not just give up the lands and its rights to just be assimilated into and under state governments! Alot of these treaty obligations were related to health care, education, housing and other core institutions of living. There is no “suckle at the teet” from the Indian perspective. It is the Tribes right to act as a responsible party to aggression, mismanagement and theft of tribal resources. Indians will never be “fully” assimilated into a dominant white male christian society and will continue to assert its independence as a sovereign nation within a nation. Better get used to it.
What is this issue of doubt of dataxman regarding liquor issues of taxation? Tribes have the authority to tax within its borders, and to do so or not to do so is their decision not yours or the States! To assert that they can’t control its people is wrong, each society or community, city or county has its issues, and level of problems, with substance abuse. To make an statement that portrays they are uneducated you need to get a grip! They are educated, with many graduates of universities all over the country. Granted there needs to be more and just watch if you live long enough there will be sustained educated Indians to wrest with the racial overtones I see here.
I agree with rosehips, give the stolen lands back to the Indians! It is the greed of the white-man and genocide of over 18 million indigenous people on this continent that America is in denial about! It is the shameful stance of the Doctrine of Discovery that is in question and should be the controlling dialogue in a world wide sense, how to make right what is fundamentally wrong is the question. Do not come across with the notion that Indians don’t have a place or a regional and national right to exist as a distinct people with its own government and society. America has not been the land of its proclaimed equality and justice for all — may your God forgive you…
greenlibertarian2nd on February 25 at 2:19 p.m.
^^^Well said.
dataxman on February 25 at 4:14 p.m.
racepony - Not sure what you are taking issue with - I was simply stating a fact that under the privatization initiative, tribes can now purchase and sell liquor without remitting any liquor taxes - something they were unable to do prior to passage of the initiative.
As to the rest of your rant - their is not Treaty with the Confederated Colville Tribes - they were established by Executive Order - so they have no right to anything. The largess they receive from the American taxpayer is just that - largess.
I know Indians are well educated - that is why the idea of having their affairs managed for them from DC is a relic whose time has passed. Stop accepting new land and release all trust land outside the Reservation and all trust held on behalf of individuals.
Assimilate or not - I care not. As long as you rely on others for your funding - you are not really sovereign - are you?