Cobell v. Norton, Civil Action Number 96-1285 (RCL) (D. D.C. 9/25/2003)
| Decision Date | 25 September 2003 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action Number 96-1285 (RCL). |
| Parties | ELOUISE PEPION COBELL, et al. Plaintiffs, v. GALE A. NORTON, Secretary of the Interior, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
("Historical Accounting")
This matter comes before the Court after a forty-four day bench trial. Having undertaken a careful review of all the evidence presented and all representations made during that trial, of the record in this case, and of the applicable law, the Court now enters a structural injunction and appoints a monitor to oversee its implementation.
This memorandum opinion is the first of two opinions issued this date. The present opinion deals solely with the further relief ordered by this Court relating to the historical accounting owed by defendants to plaintiffs. The second opinion will treat the further relief ordered by the Court relating to the obligation of the Interior defendants to bring themselves into compliance with the fiduciary duties owed to plaintiffs as the trustee-delegate of the United States for the individual Indian money trust.
A decent respect for all who will be affected by today's rulings makes it appropriate that the Court should provide a full explanation of the reasons compelling it to order such relief. Only an appreciation of the full context in which the present trial emerged will make clear precisely why this Court has determined such relief to be necessary. Part I of this opinion provides a synopsis of this litigation to date. Part II examines the tradition of institutional reform cases, and explains how the present case fits within that tradition. Part III analyzes relevant separation-of-powers issues. Parts IV and V present in detail the Court's specific findings of fact and conclusions of law. Part VI describes the relief ordered this date. Finally, in Part VII, the Court provides a brief explanation of the profound necessity for the entry of a structural injunction in this matter.
A. Factual Background
1. The Removal of the American Indians
The forced removal of American indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands is one of the darkest chapters in American history. Perhaps few today realize, however, that this forced removal did not result from isolated acts of Western settlers; rather, it was set in motion by the federal government. Moreover, few recall the clash between the executive branch and the federal judiciary over the policy of removal, in which the executive branch refused to enforce the mandate of the Supreme Court that American Indian Tribes were to be treated as sovereign entities.
In 1827, the Cherokee nation, located within the boundaries of the state of Georgia, adopted a written constitution modeled after the U.S. Constitution, which declared them to be a sovereign, autonomous nation. VINE DELORIA, JR. & CLIFFORD M. LYTLE, AMERICAN INDIANS, AMERICAN JUSTICE 28 (1983) ("American Indians"). At the time, the Cherokee nation possessed "a thriving agricultural economy, a written language, and a formal government, including a legislature, and courts." DAVID H. GETCHES ET AL., FEDERAL INDIAN LAW 96 (4th ed. 1998) ("Federal Indian Law"). The following year, the state of Georgia passed a law assimilating Cherokee lands into Georgia's northwestern counties. In 1829, the state passed a law rendering the Cherokee territory located within Georgia boundaries subject to the laws of Georgia, effectively abolishing existing Cherokee laws and customs. The Cherokee nation filed suit in federal court to enjoin the enforcement of the Georgia laws, but the matter was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1 (1831). A year after dismissing the case, however, the Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Marshall, determined the Cherokee nation to be "a distinct community, occupying its own territory,. . . in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter, but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves. . . ." Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 561 (1832).
Prior to the Court's decision, however, Congress had passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the President to compel Indian Tribes living east of the Mississippi River to migrate westward. Additionally, in 1830, the governor of Georgia had announced that gold had been discovered on the Cherokee lands, prompting widespread trespasses onto Cherokee territory by Georgia citizens searching for gold. Therefore, the governor of Georgia, together with numerous state officials, announced that they would not obey the mandate of the Supreme Court. Federal Indian Law at 122. Moreover, upon learning of the Worcester decision, President Andrew Jackson is fabled to have retorted: "Well, John Marshall has made his decision — now let him enforce it." When they realized that the executive branch had no intention of honoring the decision of the Court, the Cherokee nation reluctantly entered into the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. American Indians at 33. Soon afterward, Id. at 7.
The other Tribes dwelling east of the Mississippi River, having witnessed the fate of the Cherokee nation, realized that their removal to the West was inevitable, and entered into treaties with the United States promising to migrate westward. They included the remaining four "Civilized Tribes," the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole; and other Tribes, including the Kickapoo, Wyandot, Ottawa, Pottawatomie, Winnebago, Sac and Fox, Delaware, Shawnee, Wea, Peoria, Miami, Kaskaskia, and Piankeshaw. American Indians at 32; Federal Indian Law at 126-27.
As America expanded westward, its citizens re-encountered the Tribes that it had banished to reservations located west of the Mississippi River. Instead of forcing the Tribes to migrate further westward, however, the United States gradually adopted a new policy to deal with "the Indian problem": the Tribes would simply be assimilated into American culture. Speaking before Congress in 1881, President Chester Arthur declared that the new policy of the United States towards the Indian Tribes would be "to introduce among the Indians the customs and pursuits of civilized life and gradually to absorb them into the mass of our citizens." American Indians at 8. The primary method by which this policy would be executed was the allotment process.2
In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, 24 Stat. 388. It became popularly known as the Dawes Act, after one of its sponsors, Massachusetts Senator Henry Dawes. The Dawes Act authorized the President to divide any Indian reservation into separate plots, and assign the portions to individual tribal members, according to a prescribed formula. The head of a family was allotted a one-fourth section, or 160 acres; each single person over eighteen and each orphan child under eighteen was allotted a one-eighth section, or 80 acres; and each non-orphan child under eighteen was allotted a one-sixteenth section, or 40 acres. Any "surplus" lands that were not allotted to individual Indians were opened to settlement by non-Indians. See Cobell v. Babbitt, 91 F. Supp.2d 1, 8 (D.D.C. 1999) ("Cobell V"). Section 5 of the Dawes Act provided that "the United States . . . will hold the land thus allotted, for the period of twenty-five years, in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made, or, in case of his decease, of his heirs" and that after twenty-five years had passed, the United States would convey full title to the land to the Indian to whom the land had been allotted. The United States was authorized to extend the twenty-five year period, in its discretion. As the D.C. Circuit has previously explained, Cobell VI, 240 F.3d at 1087 (citation omitted).
One pair of commentators has stated that a key assumption of the government's allotment policy was that American Indians at 9-10. As one of the individual defendants testified during the first trial in this litigation,
the thinking was that it was tribalism that held the Indians back; that what they needed to do was develop the sort of individualism that had been so beneficial for the United States in its expansion, and allotment was the way to do that. . . . They were so confident in this assimilation policy that there was actually a sunset in most of the allotment agreements that said after 25 years the trust patents will be withdrawn, you'll be issued a fee patent, each individual who owned this land, and you will go forth and prosper. You will own the land outright, and may do with it what you wish.
Cobell V, 91 F. Supp.2d at 8. In short, to quote Theodore Roosevelt, the Dawes Act was designed to be "a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass."
By the early twentieth century, it had become evident that, as judged by its own terms, the allotment process had been an abysmal failure. It had failed to remake the American Indians in the image of the white man, and to absorb the...
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