Independent news from the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance

Elouise Cobell urges Sen. John Barrasso to support trust settlement

An exhibit including a display of the tribal flags from the Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Oglala, Rosebud, Sisseton Wahpeton, Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux Tribes. (Rapid City Journal File photo)

When the Senate get back to work next week, our federal lawmakers will once again resume deliberations on the Cobell settlement. One man in particular, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, has emerged as an opponent to settling the case.  For more background information on the Cobell case, Indianz.com provides a long list of articles on the class-action suit.

Here is a letter to the editor from Elouise Cobell to Barrasso:

Editor:

After more than 14 years of acrimonious litigation, 500,000 individual Indians and the government agreed to settle the Cobell case in December and to turn the page on this sad chapter in our nation’s history. But the settlement needs congressional approval by Oct. 15, or the parties will return to court and this singular opportunity will be irretrievably lost. Sen. John Barrasso is the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and his views are important. To this point he has opposed the settlement.

The settlement is not perfect (no settlement ever is) and Sen. Barrasso has raised important issues that the parties have worked to address When the Senate resumes deliberations next week, I hope that Sen. Barrasso will remember what he has told his fellow senators about the lawsuit.

He has made clear with his statements on the Senate floor that he wants this lawsuit settled. Continuing to spend millions of dollars defending a trust system that has not worked makes no sense, he has stated.

As the lead plaintiff in the Cobell versus Salazar lawsuit, I fully agree and I urge Sen. Barrasso to follow through on his statements and work with both parties to achieve Senate approval of the settlement. It is time to focus on helping Wyoming’s first citizens recover monies that have always belonged to them.

This is not a partisan effort. It is a worthy goal that John Barrasso needs to be an energetic leader on in the Senate. Some of his state’s most-deserving people merit nothing less from their senator.

ELOUISE COBELL, Browning, Mont.

Jodi Rave

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She's been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in "The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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