NY Times editorial: Justice for American Indians

A New York Times editorial today states that the “federal government has a long history of cheating American Indians, and not all of this dirty dealing is in the distant past.”

The editorial discusses a case the Supreme Court heard today wherein the Navajo Nation argues that it lost about $600 million dollars’ worth of coal royalties because the government helped the coal company underpay for the Navajo coal it mined.

A lower federal court has already ruled for the Navajo Nation. “The ruling found that the Interior Department met “secretly with parties having interests adverse to” the Navajo, adopted those parties’ “desired course of action in lieu of action favorable to” the Navajo, and misled the Navajo about its actions.”

“The government’s behavior was “indefensible,” according to four former interior secretaries . . . The Obama administration, which has inherited the Bush administration’s position in the case, should not continue to stand up for these misdeeds.”

Get the entire editorial.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Indian Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.