Elouise P. Cobell

Elouise Pepion Cobell (born November 5, 1945 in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation , Montana , † October 16, 2011 in Great Falls , Montana) was an American activist for the Native Americans. She became known for her lawsuit against the United States Department of the Interior and the Treasury Department. The lawsuit concerned mismanagement and corruption within the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Many other victims joined the lawsuit. The amount originally requested was $ 176 billion. It was the largest class action lawsuit in United States history, involving over 500,000 people. The case went as Cobell v. Salazar entered the history of the United States. The case was settled out of court on December 8, 2009. The federal government promised to pay out US $ 3.4 billion to the landowners affected. To this end, the US House of Representatives passed the Claims Resolution Act of 2010 in 2010. President Obama signed the bill on December 8, 2010.

Life

Elouise P. Cobell was born in 1945 as Elouise Pepion on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwest Montana, the fifth of nine children. She grew up on her father's cattle ranch without running water or electricity on the reservation. After attending the village school, she attended high school. She studied in Bozeman without graduating because her mother had cancer and she had to take care of it. After her mother's death, she moved to Seattle , where she met her future husband, Alvin Cobell. Together they had a son, Turk Cobell. After returning to the reservation to help her father on the ranch, she was elected treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe. She founded the Blackfeet National Bank, the first bank owned by Native Americans. In 1997 she received the MacArthur Fellowship Award for this . After twenty other Indian tribes had joined the bank project, the 'Native American Bank' emerged. She also helped her husband run her father's ranch.

As treasurer of the Blackfoot tribe, she noticed irregularities in the management of the properties by the BIA. The BIA managed properties as trustees for the indigenous people who were awarded the properties under the Dawes Act . Since the BIA formally owned the properties, the BIA leased them to white farmers, oil and gas, mining and forestry companies without paying the owners any money in return. Cabell tried unsuccessfully in the 1980s and 1990s to induce Washington and the BIA to change direction. Because of this, she sued the United States Department of the Interior and Treasury in 1996. Cobell died of cancer at the age of 65.

Honor

In November 2016, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom .

Individual evidence

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Cobell, Elouise P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Cobell, Elouise Pepion
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American Indian activist
DATE OF BIRTH	November 5, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH	Blackfeet Indian Reservation
DATE OF DEATH	October 16, 2011
Place of death	Great Falls , Montana , United States

[1] Los Angelos Times October 17, 2011 Cobell died Sunday at a hospital in Great Falls, Mont., Of complications from cancer, her spokesman Bill McAllister announced

[2] Cobell filed her lawsuit in 1996 after years of kinder entreaties failed, demanding payment of all unpaid revenues from Indian leases for the past century, a tally of past revenues, and a new accounting system to deal with future revenues. According to Cobell's forensic accountants, the government owes $ 176 billion to individual Indian landowners, averaging $ 352,000 per plaintiff, making this monetarily the largest class-action lawsuit ever launched.

[3] While generations of non-Indians have become rich harvesting the abundant resources of private Indian lands — which once included virtually all the oil fields of Oklahoma — Indian landowners have been paid only erratically, and far less than their due. Consequently, even landowning Indians remain among the nation's poorest citizens

[4] The White House: President Obama Names Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. November 16, 2016, accessed November 22, 2016 .