Today in class we watched a movie called 100 Years and it was about how the Allotment Act in 1887 still effects Native Americans today. Once Native lands were allotted, the government enacted federal paternalism and pretty much said that the Natives didn’t know how to manage their money so they would do it for them. With this, the government rented out the land that was not being used on the Natives’ allotments to companies to harvest oil, lumber, and other resources. The Natives were supposed to be getting reimbursed by the government for the use of their land, but this was not happening.
Elouise Cobell, a Blackfoot Confederacy elder, decided that her people needed to get the reimbursement they deserved. In 1996 she filed the largest class action lawsuit ever filed against the Federal Government to try and get the Natives their money. The total amount that the Natives were supposed to receive over the years was well over $100 billion. Cobell proposed the government reimburse them $27.5 billion, a fraction of what they should be getting. She fought and fought. The government tried to compromise with Cobell and reimburse them $8 billion. She agreed to that so she could get money for the older people who were dying without getting their well deserved money. The $8 billion proposal ended up getting pulled and a new proposal of $3.4 billion was offered. Even though this was much less than the Native people deserved, it was something, so in 2010 Cobell took it.
In the end of the movie Cobell says, “The court has not failed us.” In my opinion this is untrue. I feel that the court has failed the Native people. The government basically stole over $100 billion from Native people and the court only reimbursed them for a very small fraction of that. I would say that the court has greatly failed them.
makayla7 June 28, 2018
The strength and patience that Elouise Cobell exhibited throughout this entire lawsuit shows her ambition and the hope that she has for her people. Even though the $3.4 billion is about $24.1 billion less than what she originally proposed, settling for it was a good idea because I feel like if she hadn’t, then the amount would have declined even more and the people in these communities certainly could not have handled that. I agree with what you said about the court failing the Natives. It is pretty clear to me that the US Gov put this case on the back burner for over a decade, allowing Indians to die. This money wasn’t even the governments, they were supposed to be reimbursing the Natives!