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37 NARF Legal Rev. 1 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/narf37 and id is 1 raw text is: NARF BRINGS HISTORICAL TRIBAL TRUST CLAIMS TO HISTORIC SETTLEMENTS Introduction Today, the United States government says that it holds almost 3,000 accounts valued collectively at over $3.2 billion in trust for over 250 American Indian and Alaska Native tribes.' Some of these accounts date back to the 1800s. In the last decade, over 110 of these tribes have sued the United States for historical trust accounting and mismanagement claims. Over 40 of these tribes have been represented by NARF. Until 2012 only about half a dozen tribes had settled their historical breach of trust claims. In early 2012 the White House announced the unprecedented - settlements of the claims of over 40 tribes for over $1 billion, including over 25 of NARF's clients. Just what are these tribal trust accounts, why were tribes (and why are some tribes still) suing the govern- ment over them, and how did a single Administration manage to settle almost one half of the century old claims that it inherited? Tribal Trust Accounts The government's holding of trust accounts for tribes dates back to an 1820 federal policy. At that time the United States entered into treaties with tribes as sovereign nations. The inter-sov- ereign treaties were primarily transactions of land from tribes to the United States in exchange for various forms of compensation including money, services, and protection. The United States decided that when it paid tribes for the land it purchased from them it would not do so directly. Instead, the United States would hold 'The accounts that the government holds in trust for tribes are independent of the accounts that the government holds in trust for hundreds of thousands of individual Indians. the money in trust for tribes unless and until it distributed the money to the tribal beneficiaries. This policy became law in 1837 when Congress required the government to deposit payments for tribal treaty lands in the Treasury. By 1840 the government was holding $4.5 million of such treaty funds in trust for tribes. By the WINTER/SPRING 2012 VOLUME 37, NO. 1

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