More links of interest

From the CBC Archives: The Battle for Aboriginal Treaty Rights

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A couple of stories on a current exhibit in London which features paintings of four Iroquois leaders who met with Queen Anne in the early 1700s:
The hereditary chiefs of the Six Nations, who do not carry Canadian passports and thus could not make the trip, sent Keith Jamieson, a Mohawk curator and historian, to read a statement on their behalf: "We are pleased that the people of the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to revisit this shared event in our history," the statement read in part, "and we take this opportunity to remind our English allies that these portraits are an expression of our sovereignty as nations."

From the Globe and Mail: The 'Indian Kings' return to London

From Macleans magazine: Canadian Natives Stress Equal Status as Nation at London Portrait Exhibit

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From the BBC News:

Cherokees eject slave descendants (March 4, 2007)

The Great American Land Row (2003). Further and more current info on this case here.

This story came out just today (March 7):

The Bush administration has proposed to settle all trust mismanagement claims and pay for trust reform with $7 billion despite acknowledging the price tag could run into the hundreds of billions.

In testimony to Congress two years ago this month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the federal government's liability for tribal trust claims runs "more than $200 billion."

But in a letter to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on Thursday, Gonzales and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne offered a much lower amount. They said the administration was prepared to "invest" $7 billion to settle all trust mismanagement claims.

The money would end the more than 250 tribal cases as well as the billion-dollar Cobell lawsuit over individual Indian funds. In exchange, the administration demands Congress extinguish the government's liability for all future trust claims.

Not only would the money be used to resolve the lawsuits, it would be used to pay for trust reform programs at the Interior Department. In the letter, Gonzales and Kempthorne cite fractionation, information technology security and a controversial initiative to shift all management duties to tribes and individual Indians.

"We look forward to continuing our work with Congress to help usher in a new era of independence and prosperity for Indian landowners and tribes and a future relationship with Indian Country that reflects our commitments to self-governance and self-determination," the two Bush officials said.

The proposal was immediately met with resistance from the Cobell plaintiffs. Keith Harper, a Washington, D.C., attorney for the plaintiffs, called it a "bad faith offer."

"You cannot say that you have a potentially $200 billion liability [for tribes] and try to settle that, plus Cobell, plus trust reform, plus IT security, for $7 billion," he said yesterday. "That is patently bad faith."

Paul's note: $ 7 billion!?? And we've spent how much so far on the war?