WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Interior Department must account for century-old land royalties owed to American Indians, re versing a lower court’s ruling that the task is impossible.
A 2008 decision by U.S. District Judge James Robertson said that Interior had unreasonably delayed an accounting but that the task was ultimately impossible. He later ruled the Indian plaintiffs were entitled to $455 million, a fraction of the $47 billion or more they have said they are owed.
The appeals court said Friday that that court erred in freeing the government from the accounting burden. Chief Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the decision allowed the Interior Department “to throw up its hands and stop the accounting.”
“Without an accounting, it is impossible to know who is owed what,” Sentelle wrote. “The best any trust beneficiary could hope for would be a government check in an arbitrary amount.”
The lawsuit, first filed 13 years ago, claims American Indians were swindled out of royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887 for things such as oil, gas, grazing and timber.
The three-judge panel acknowledged that the task is complicated and said Interior should focus on the “low-hanging fruit” and not muddy the process by spending time and money accounting for, say, closed accounts or those in probate.
The lead plaintiff, Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana, expressed disappointment in the ruling Friday, saying the decision will delay a trial even further — as well as distribution of funds that are owed.
The class-action suit deals with individual Indians’ lands and covers about 500,000 Indians and their heirs.
Several tribes have sued separately, claiming mismanagement of their lands.
