Claims Resolution Act of 2010 (Cobell settlement; Land Buy-Back Program)

What happened

The Claims Resolution Act of 2010, Public Law 111-291, was signed December 8, 2010. Title I, "Individual Indian Money Account Litigation Settlement," approved the settlement of the long-running Cobell class action over the government's management of individual American Indian trust accounts. Other titles of the Act deal with a different settlement and with tribal water rights.

For land, the key part is the Trust Land Consolidation Fund. The Act says that on final approval of the settlement, the Treasury would deposit "$1,900,000,000" in it, available to the Secretary of the Interior for 10 years "to conduct the Land Consolidation Program."

The Interior Department says the settlement became final on November 24, 2012. In a press release that year it described a $3.4 billion settlement, including a $1.5 billion fund for class members and a $1.9 billion fund for a program that "allows for the voluntary sale of individual land interests that have 'fractionated,' or split among owners, over successive generations." Up to $60 million of the land fund could pay for scholarships.

Interior's Land Buy-Back Program page says the program bought fractional interests from willing sellers at fair market value and that consolidated interests were "immediately restored to Tribal trust ownership." It says the program consolidated "more than 800,000 interests, equivalent to 2.3 million acres, across 50 locations in 15 states," that its 10-year period ended November 24, 2022, and that a final report was released December 4, 2023.

Good to know. 'Land Buy-Back Program' is Interior's name for what the Act calls the Land Consolidation Program, and the results given are Interior's own figures.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error