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 […]
Honest Injun
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 […]
Cobell (Individual Indian Money Trust Fund) Settlement News
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 […]
The Nature of Things
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 […]
Good News in the Individual Indian Money Trust Fund Case
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,” […]