US to pay $554M in settlement with Navajos

The federal government has agreed to pay the Navajo Nation $554 million to settle allegations that the United States mismanaged the tribe’s funds for more than 50 years. 

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and other Obama administration officials will announce the deal Friday in Arizona. It will be the largest government settlement with a Native American tribe in U.S. history.

“The historic agreement strengthens the government-to-government relationship between the United States and the Navajo Nation, helps restore a positive working relationship with the Nation’s leaders and empowers Navajo communities,” Jewell said in a statement. 

{mosads}The settlement stems from a 2006 lawsuit in which the Navajo Nation accused the U.S. of failing to invest the tribe’s resources in a way that would maximize profits since 1946.

The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American tribe in the country in both membership and territory. The tribe has 300,000 members and 27,000 square miles spread across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. 

The government mismanaged the tribe’s resources, the tribe claimed, on more than 14 million acres that were held in trust and leased for farming, energy, development, logging and mining. 

The Nation originally sought $900 million in the lawsuit.

Over the last few years, the Obama administration has paid more than $2.6 billion to 80 tribes in settlements related to tribal trust accounts.

Jewell said the settlements have “opened a new chapter in federal trust relations with tribes and individual Indian beneficiaries.”