Washington, D.C.12-8-09

After more than a decade of litigation, U.S. officials announced today that the federal government has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle claims that it grossly mismanaged Indian trust accounts.

The potential settlement, which must still be approved by Congress and the courts, would bring a close to the long-running Cobell Indian trust case, and would result in payments to roughly 300,000 individual Indian trust accounts. It would also create a program to consolidate ownership of Indian trust lands.

The class action, brought in 1996 by Elouise Cobell, alleged that the Interior Department had been failing for more than a century to properly disburse payments from a trust fund set up to manage revenues from Indian land. Cobell had originally sought $58 billion in the case, but last year, Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the government was only liable for $455.6 million.

The settlement was announced on Dec. 8 at a joint press conference with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Justice Department officials.

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