[env-trinity] Hoopa Valley Tribe Sues Federal Gov't for $80 Million

[TBedros765 at aol.com]

News from the Hoopa Valley Reservation pasted and attached. 
Thank you. 




FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- FEB. 1, 2008

HOOPA VALLEY TRIBE SUES GOVERNMENT OVER DISBURSEMENT OF   THE HOOPA-YUROK 
SETTLEMENT FUND

 Media Contacts:        Clifford Lyle Marshall              (530) 625-4211
                              Tom Schlosser                    (206) 386-5200
Tod Bedrosian                          (916) 421-5121

Hoopa, CA – The Hoopa Valley Tribe of northern California filed an $80 
million lawsuit against the federal government today (Feb. 1, 2008) because the U.S. 
Department of Interior (DOI) has begun disbursing trust fund money from Hoopa 
timber sales to the neighboring Yurok Tribe. The funds came from logging on 
Hoopa Valley Reservation before it was divided by Congress in 1988.   “We are 
suing because the Department of Interior’s decision to give all the Hoopa 
timber money to the Yuroks defied federal law and preempted a more equitable 
solution by Congress,” said Hoopa Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall.

The Hoopa lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, 
D.C. was triggered by the DOI’s $15,000 payment to individual members of the 
Yurok Tribe on Jan. 15.

The lawsuit is the aftermath of the DOI’s decision last spring to give all 
$90 million of the   Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act (HYSA) funds to the Yuroks. The 
money was part of a government plan to divide and disburse profits from the 
Hoopa Reservation timber sales managed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 
1974-88. When the adjacent Hoopa and Yurok reservations were Congressionally 
split in l988, Hoopa accepted the agreement and part of the timber receipts. The 
Yurok Tribe refused the money and sued to negate the division of the Hoopa 
Valley Reservation into the ancestral lands of the two tribes. 

Nearly two decades of unsuccessful Yurok litigation followed as the remaining 
funds grew to $90 million. The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee conducted 
a hearing on the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act in 2002.   The Interior 
Department recommended new legislation.   Following mediation between the Hoopa Tribal 
Council and the Yurok Tribal Council, the tribes also agreed on proposed 
legislation, but nothing was enacted.   In 2007, high officials in the Interior 
Department decided the Department’s long-standing position had been wrong and no 
legislation was necessary.   “Interior had other plans. They treated the 
Settlement Act as a right of first refusal by Congress and they took the law into 
their own hands when Congress was slow to react,” said Marshall.   

The original monies in the HYSA Trust Fund came (98%) from timber sales on 
the Hoopa Valley Reservation. The tribe agreed to share the timber receipts 
money with the Yuroks as a condition of the l988 Congressional HYSA act that split 
the reservations. The Yuroks refused to accept the division of the 
reservation and the money. Their unsuccessful litigation for more money ended when the 
U.S. Supreme Court would not hear their case. “The Settlement Act gave the 
Yurok Tribe until November 1993 to drop its litigation and obtain certain 
benefits; it refused to do so,” said Marshall. “Now that they lost in the courts they 
have used lobbying tactics at the Department of Interior to reverse the last 
decade of legal and administrative decisions saying they could not access this 
money.”

The Hoopa Valley Tribe had asked Congress to intervene and resolve this final 
fiscal chapter of the HYSA. Marshall said, “Congress could have resolved this 
issue equitably for both tribes, but the Interior Department has chosen to 
inequitably amend the statute by itself.”

                                    - 30-   





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