The Barack Obama administration has offered to spend $3 billion (£1.8bn) to settle a long-running lawsuit with native American tribes that claim they were swindled out of billions of dollars in royalties for oil, gas, grazing and other leases dating back more than a century.
If cleared by Congress and the courts, the settlement would be the largest Indian claim ever approved against the US government – exceeding the combined total of all previous settlements of Indian claims.
President Obama said an agreement on the case, known as Cobell v. Salazar, was an important step to reconcile decades of acrimony between Indian tribes and the federal government.
Under an agreement reached with tribes, the Interior Department would distribute $1.4 billion to more than 300,000 native American tribe members to compensate them for historical accounting claims, and to resolve future claims.
The government also would spend $2 billion to buy back and consolidate tribal land broken up in previous generations. The scheme would allow individual tribe members to obtain cash payments for land interests divided among numerous family members and return the land to tribal control.
The settlement would give every tribe member with an Interior Department account an immediate check for $1,000, with additional payments to be determined later under a complicated formula that takes into account a variety of factors.
Many tribe members also would receive payments for parcels of land that are held in some cases by up to 100 family members, in an effort to consolidate tribal land and make it more useful and easier to manage.
The disputed leases have been overseen by the Interior Department since 1887, when in an effort to assimilate native Americans, Congress passed the Dawes Act, allowing the federal government to seize tribal land, divide it up and assign it individual tribal members. Historically, tribes owned land collectively.
Complications ensued when control of resource-rich land was given to private companies. Tribal members were supposed to be compensated, but later generations made competing claims on land that was divided into smaller and smaller parcels as more claimants were born.
Ken Salazar, the Interior Secretary, said: "This historic step will allow Interior to move forward and address the educational, law enforcement, and economic development challenges we face in Indian Country."
Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe from Montana who was the lead plaintiff in the case, called the proposed settlement crucial for hundreds of thousands of native Americans who have suffered for more than a century through mismanagement of the Indian trust.
"Today is a monumental day for all of the people in Indian Country that have waited so long for justice," said Cobell, who appeared at a news conference with Mr Salazar, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, and other US officials.
"Did we get all the money that was due us? Probably not," Cobell said, but added: "There's too many individual Indian beneficiaries that are dying every single day without their money."
The settlement does not include a formal apology for any wrongdoing by the U.S. government, but does contain language in which US officials acknowledge a "breach of trust" on Indian land issues.
An apology "would have been nice," Mrs Cobell said, but was less important than settling the dispute. "Actions are more important to me than apologies," she said.
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