The U.S. Department of the Interior's (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs recently announced a buy-back program available to more than 3,000 landowners with interests at the Lower Brule Reservation in South Dakota.
According to a news release, the buy-back program has sent more than $2.8 million in purchase offers to those landowners. Funding is provided through the DOI's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations. Landowners have until Thursday to accept those offers.
“The department is pleased to continue land consolidation work through the buy-back program at the Lower Brule Reservation,” Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said, according to the release. “The buy-back program is a unique and time-limited opportunity. Landowners are encouraged to contact the trust beneficiary call center to learn more about their options to make an informed decision.”
The program implements the land consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement, which provided $1.9 billion to consolidate fractional interests in trust or restricted land within a 10-year period, which ends November 2022. The program will continue to purchase fractional interests while winding down operations.
The Cobell Settlement is a class-action lawsuit filed by Elouise Pepion Cobell against former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The class action complaint was filed June 10, 1996, seeking to redress alleged breaches of trust by the United States, and its trustee delegates the secretary of interior, the assistant secretary of interior for Indian affairs and the secretary of the treasury regarding management of individual Native American money accounts held on behalf of individual Native Americans.
The complaint sought, among other things, declaratory and injunctive relief construing the trust obligations of the defendants to members of the plaintiff class and declaring that defendants have breached and are in continuing breach of their trust obligations to class members.
On Dec. 21, 1999, the court held that the defendants were then in breach of certain of their respective trust duties. On Feb. 23, 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the lower court’s determination that defendants were in breach of their statutory trust duties in Cobell v. Norton.
