AOLThe U.S. has agreed to pay the Navajo Nation more than half a billion dollars for mismanaging reservation resources and leaving the largest Native American tribe in the country at incredible disadvantages for decades.
The $554 million agreement negotiated earlier this year is also the largest payout to a tribe in U.S. history, and tribal leaders say the payout is a much-needed cash infusion. (Video via YouTube / Ben Shelly)
Spread across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the Navajo Nation has more than 300,000 members. While the region is historically rich with natural resources like oil, gas and coal, other resources like water and good land for agriculture are scarce. (Video via Navajo Tourism Department)
A Navajo lawsuit said from 1946 to 2012, the U.S. didn’t negotiate the best deals from companies mining natural resources from the region and didn’t make sure the Navajos were compensated properly. (Video via Indian Country Today)
A CCTV investigation in 2012 found that more than 40 percent of the nation’s members lived without running water or electricity.
Two areas tribal leaders stressed the settlement didn’t cover – water rights and health concerns from uranium mining. The Navajo Nation has several abandoned, Cold War-era uranium mines the tribe worries have caused cancer. (Video via CCTV)
This is another in a long line of settlements by the Obama administration with Native Americans, who had tried in vain for generations to battle government practices and a system that dated back to the 1800s.
The Washington Post reports many tribes with pending litigation wrote to President Obama in 2009 asking the administration to expedite settlements instead of going to court.
Including this Navajo settlement, The Post reports the administration has now reached agreements with more than 80 tribes totaling $2.61 billion.
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http://www.aol.com/article/2014/09/25/u-s-will-pay-554m-settlement-to-navajo-nation/20967609/?a_dgi
And that is a pittance and disgusting, these people have been robbed again and again and now the feds are adding insult to injury.
What would Russell Means have said?
How about the Federal Government back out of those territories all together as well as the states and leave those people alone! No Money, but also NO INTERFEARANCE!
Across the street from me are people who are American Aborigines who brag to me about all the money they get from the federal government and for each child for life without having to lift a finger for it. You should see the opulent lifestyle they lead. We live like crap. I have degrees to my name and skills and they are given hiring and promotion preferences. BS!!!!!! I don’t want welfare, and dam it THEY DON’T DESERVE TO GET IT EITHER!!!! NO MORE WELFAIR FOR THE AMERICAN ABORIGINEES. FINISHED! For these people are we supposed to ware ashes and sackcloth for the next 100 generation for what happened to their ancestors? I can easily say they committed a lot of atrocities against my people too. Where does it end? We are acting just like we are acting toward the JEWS!!!!! Germany is still paying for the interment of them. Are we supposed to pay forever fore their ancestor’s internment?
This is ridiculous aht that judged needs to be dragged out of office and put in prison for misappropriation of state funds, and treason.
The American aboriginal tribes need to also understand that we patriots are willing to stand with them in the conflict that is coming as equals, but we are not willing to put up with this holocaust guilt trip crap they are trying to heap on the rest of us either. Rest of the American Nationals they would find to be a formidable enemy, or a good friends. We can all walk forward in to freedom together.
I am sick of them wagging their “Special Status” weenie in our faces. Aren’t we all supposed to be American Nationals? My advice to them is to get off the booze and pick up where Russell Means left off. That guy was cool!!!