Legal Services offers help filing for Cobell settlement

Staff and wire report

Montana Legal Services is offering to help people who are entitled to a settlement from the Cobell v. Salazar legal settlement to obtain their settlement before the rapidly approaching deadline arrives.

The settlement is the result of a lawsuit filed by Eloise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe, who sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs, saying the branch of the Interior Department had been mismanaging, squandering and stealing billions of dollars in land-lease royalties and other tribal property for a century.

A settlement in the case was reached in 2009 and becam...