This Day in History: 2017-12-04

December 8, 2009 – “U.S. Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Brought by Native Americans for $3.4 Billion”
The United States federal government announced that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds. In 2012, it finalized this settlement, ending one of the largest and most complicated class-action lawsuits ever brought against the United States. The lawsuit lasted 15 years in total and involved hundreds of thousands of land trust accounts that date back to the 19th century. Specialists in federal tribal law described the suit as one of the most important in the history of legal disputes involving the government’s treatment of American Indians.