By Laurie Liles | Cronkite News
The U.S. will pay the Navajo Nation $554 million to settle the tribe’s eight-year-old lawsuit claiming the government mismanaged royalties on tribal mineral resource contracts for decades.
The settlement, scheduled to be signed Friday in a ceremony in Window Rock, calls for the largest government payout ever to an individual tribe.
Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly said in an e-mail that the deal is “a victory for tribal sovereignty.” Administration officials, meanwhile, cited it as further proof of President Obama’s efforts to honor relationships between U.S. and tribal governments.
“The Navajo Nation has worked tirelessly for many years to bring this issue to a close,” Shelly’s statement said. “I am pleased that we have finally come to a resolution on this matter to receive fair and just compensation for the Navajo Nation.”
The tribe sued in 2006, charging that the federal government had mishandled royalties since at least 1946 from oil, gas, coal, uranium and other mineral leases it held in trust for the tribe.
That lawsuit originally sought $900 million in damages as well as detailed reporting on tribal accounts. But in agreeing to the settlement deal in May, the Navajo Nation Council said continuing to press the suit presented “significant” risks. That agreement, signed in early June, gave the government 120 days to pay up.
There are no restrictions on how the money can be spent. Shelly’s statement said the tribe would host town hall meetings across the Nation to decide how to best utilize and invest the funds.
Under the deal, neither the government nor the Navajo Nation admits liability or wrongdoing and both agree to ask the court to dismiss the suit. The tribe agrees it will not sue the government for trust-related harms that occurred before the deal was reached.
But the settlement preserves the tribe’s right to pursue water-rights claims and to pursue relief for environmental or health impacts from historical uranium mining on or near the Navajo reservation.
The settlement also does not diminish the tribe’s hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering rights, among other provisions.
