In the late  19th century, the United States took lands from American Indian nations and transferred them to individual tribal members. Those lands were often managed by the federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) which would arrange to lease the lands for grazing and mining purposes. The U.S. was supposed to pay the royalties to the Indian owners but often did not do so and over time many records were lost. Twenty years of litigation has ended with a settlement by which the US will pay $1.4 billion to class members (roughly $1000 per person) and in addition establish a $2 billion fund for the voluntary buy-back and consolidation of fractionated land interests. Read Interior Department press release. Here is the Turtletalk report on the settlement.

In City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, 544 U.S. 197 (2005), the Supreme Court ruled that too much time had passed for the Oneida Indian Nation to assert sovereignty over land that was illegally taken from it by the state of New York in the early 19th century. Although the transfer of title from the tribe to the state violated the federal Trade and Intercourse Act, 25 U.S.C. §177, and thus was of no validity whatsoever and although no federal or state statute of limitations barred the tribe’s property claim against the state, the doctrine of laches was applied to deny the tribe sovereign powers over land it had repurchased from a non-Indian owner even though that land had been within its original reservation and those lands had never been taken by the United States – the only sovereign with the power to extinguish tribal title to the land. As a result,