Cobell honored posthumously
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HELENA — Governor Steve Bullock has proclaimed Nov. 5 Elouise Cobell Day in honor of the woman who lead a 15-year, class-action lawsuit on behalf of Indians against the federal government, demanding back payment and better accounting on Individual Indian Money Accounts managed by the BIA.
Cobell served as the treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe for more than a decade, where she discovered the accounting of the management of individual lands held in trust by the United States to be in chaos and filed the largest class-action suit against the federal government in United States history to recover royalties that had never been paid. She was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in 1996, known as Cobell v. Salazar, which after 14 years of litigation resulted in a 2009 settlement of $3.4 billion, approved by Congress and the President in 2010 to provide payment to those whose property had been held in trust.
An enrolled member of the Blackfeet tribe, Cobell was born on Nov. 5 and passed away in 2011 at the age of 65.
