Elouise Cobell dies; fought for Indian royalties

Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Indian Nation, who fought the federal government to gain restitution for long-term theft of mineral rights and royalties across Native American lands, passed away Sunday, Oct. 16. She was 65. (Photo: Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times)

When she became treasurer of her tribe in 1976 she noticed money was missing from government Indian Trust accounts that she later said were in "total chaos." She discovered a web of fraud and corruption that revealed more than a century's worth of withheld royalties from Native Americans by the federal government. She filed the largest class action lawsuit in American history in 1996, which demanded restitution for more than 500,000 Native Americans. This June, she and her fellow defendants won that suit and were awarded a $3.4 billion settlement, the largest payment ever proposed to Native Americans from the U.S. government.

She helped establish Blackfeet National Bank in 1987, the first bank founded by an Indian tribe on a reservation. In 1997, she received a $300,000 MacArthur Foundation grant, which she donated to the class action suit's legal defense fund. In 2000, her tribe declared her a warrior of the Blackfeet Nation and presented her with an eagle feather, an honor reserved for military veterans.

As word of her passing spread, memorials flooded Montana, where the Blackfeet Reservation is located. The National Rural Assembly remembered her as "the best kind of fighter" who could "brush off setbacks time and again, and still find the heart to win against long odds." President Obama released a statement that said Cobell's work "provided a measure of justice to hundreds of thousands of Native Americans." (Read more)