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 became U.S. law in 2011. Almost all payments have been made, but some entitled to part of the settlement have not been found, including several thousand members of Montana tribes.

North Carolina-based lawyer David Smith said the minimum amount awarded to class members is typically $2,000. The maximum he has seen was several million dollars.

Time is running out for the people entitled to a settlement to notify the government of their whereabouts. U.S. District of Columbia District Court Judge Thomas Hogan set a Nov. 27 deadline in a January order, after it was apparent that efforts to find tribe members entitled to the award money listed as “whereabouts unknown” were no longer as successful.

Unclaimed funds that remain after the deadline passes will be added to the Cobell Educational Scholarship Fund.

Montana Legal Services said in a release that people may be able to file a claim if they had an Individual Indian Money Account or if they owned land held in trust by the U.S. government. People can contact Garden City Group, which handles the settlement payments, at 1-800-961-6109 to file their claim: .

For more information, people can visit the “American Indian Issues” section in the “Legal Topics” dropdown menu at http://www.MontanaLawHelp.org. If they can’t find what they want, they can click the “LiveHelp” button or call Montana Legal Services Association at 1-406-442-9830, ext. 149.