{"id":682,"date":"2011-02-17T20:46:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=682"},"modified":"2023-12-21T17:17:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T17:17:16","slug":"native-alaskan-family-awarded-4-9-million-in-damages-for-trespass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2011\/02\/17\/native-alaskan-family-awarded-4-9-million-in-damages-for-trespass\/","title":{"rendered":"Native Alaskan family awarded $4.9 million in damages for trespass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A federal judge awarded the Oenga family of Barrow, Alaska $4.9 million dollars in damages against the United States because the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) authorized BP oil company to cross the Oenga&#8217;s property to obtain access to 3 of BP&#8217;s oil fields when the family had only granted permission for access to one of those fields<a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Top_News\/US\/2011\/02\/09\/Judge-awards-Alaskan-family-5M\/UPI-92521297313489\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">. Judge Awards Alaskan family $5M&nbsp;<\/a>(U.S. News, Feb. 9, 2001)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the case is, in some sense, an ordinary trespass case, it is complicated by the fact that the BIA has legally-enforceable fiduciary obligations to protect the property rights of Native Alaskans. The Oengas are Inupiats (Eskimos).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/trespass\/\" rel=\"tag\">Trespass<\/a><span class=\"wp-block-post-terms__separator\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/tribal-property\/\" rel=\"tag\">Tribal Property<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal judge awarded the Oenga family of Barrow, Alaska $4.9 million dollars in damages against the United States because the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) authorized BP oil company to cross the Oenga&#8217;s property to obtain access to 3 of BP&#8217;s oil fields when the family had only granted permission for access to one of those fields. Judge Awards Alaskan family $5M&nbsp;(U.S. News, Feb. 9, 2001) While the case is, in some sense, an ordinary trespass case, it is complicated by the fact that the BIA has legally-enforceable fiduciary obligations to protect the property rights of Native Alaskans. The Oengas are Inupiats (Eskimos).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trespass","category-tribal-property"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}