Elouise P. Cobell

Elouise Pepion Cobell, also known as Yellow Bird Woman (November 5, 1945 – October 16, 2011) (Niitsítapi Blackfoot Confederacy), was a tribal elder and activist, banker, rancher, and lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking class-action suit Cobell v. Salazar. This challenged the United States' mismanagement of trust funds belonging to more than 500,000 individual Native Americans. She pursued the suit from 1996, challenging the government to account for fees from resource leases.

In 2010, the government approved a $3.4 billion settlement for the trust case. Major portions of the settlement were to partially compensate individual account holders, and to buy back fractionated land interests, and restore land to reservations. It also provided for a $60 million scholarship fund for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives, named the Cobell Education Scholarship Fund in her honor. The settlement is the largest ever in a class action against the federal government.

Buy-back of lands has continued, restoring acreage to the tribes. As of November 2016, $40 million had been contributed to the scholarship fund by the government, from its purchase of lands. It has paid $900 million to buy back the equivalent of 1.7 million acres in fractionated land interests, restoring the land base of reservations to tribal control.

In November 2016, Cobell's work on behalf of Native Americans was honored by the award of a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama; her son Turk Cobell accepted the award on her behalf.

After her mother's death, Elouise moved to Seattle, where she met and married Alvin Cobell, another Blackfeet living in Washington at the time.

Cobell was the former president of Montana's Elvis Presley fan club, but left these activities to focus on her landmark lawsuit. In her honor, all car radios during her funeral procession were tuned to Elvis songs. Her family arranged to have at the viewing a pair of life-size Elvis cutouts standing against the rear wall. A photo of Cobell and her family at Graceland flashed occasionally in the rotating display on a big screen overhead. The buffet featured a giant cake, decorated with the words, "In Loving Memory of Elouise Cobell", and a picture of Elvis.

Challenging federal management of trust funds

While Treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe for more than a decade, Cobell discovered many irregularities in the management of funds held in trust by the United States for the tribe and for individual Indians. These funds were derived from fees collected by the government for Indian trust lands leased for lumber, oil production, grazing, gas and minerals, etc., from which the government was supposed to pay royalties to Indian owners. Over time accounts became complicated as original trust lands were divided among descendants, and Cobell found that tribal members were not receiving their fair amount of trust funds.

Along with the Intertribal Monitoring Association (on which she served as President), Cobell attempted to seek reform in Washington, DC, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s without success. At that point she asked Dennis Gingold (renowned banking lawyer, based in Washington, DC), Thaddeus Holt, and the Native American Rights Fund (including John Echohawk and Keith Harper) to bring a class-action suit against the Department of Interior in order to force reform and an accounting of the trust funds belonging to individual Indians.

They set up the Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, "a nonprofit created to bring claims against the United States for mismanaging lands held in trust for Native Americans."

Settlement The class-action suit was filed in October 1996 and is known as Cobell v. Salazar (Salazar was Secretary of Interior when the case was settled.) A negotiated settlement was reached in 2009 by the administration of President Barack Obama. In 2010 Congress passed a bill to appropriate $3.4 billion for settlement of the longstanding class action suit. It had three parts: payment of individual plaintiffs included in the class action; a fund of $1.9 billion to buy back fractionated land interest in voluntary sales, and restore land to reservations, strengthening their land base. It also provided for a $60 million scholarship fund to be funded from the sales, named the Cobell Education Scholarship Fund in her honor.

As of July 2011, notices were being sent to the hundreds of thousands of individual Native Americans affected. Most received settlements of about $1800, but some may receive more. As of November 2016, the government had spent about $900 million to buy back the equivalent of 1.7 million acres in fractionated land interests, restoring the land base of reservations to tribal control. In addition, $40 million has been added so far to the Cobell Scholarship Fund.

Legacy and honors 1997: "Genius Grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Fellowship Program 2011: awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College 2011: awarded the Montana Trial Lawyers Association's Citizens Award 2016: awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Her son Turk Cobell accepted the medal on her behalf. 2018: one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame