Hoopa chairman says U.S. decision reopens old woun

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Hoopa chairman says U.S. decision reopens old wounds John Driscoll The
Times-Standard Article Launched: 03/03/2007

Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall was in Washington,
D.C., Thursday when he read a U.S. Interior Department letter that shows
the Yurok Tribe will likely get a $90 million fund.
"We never saw it coming," Marshall said.
The Interior Department's legal analysis led it to make an
administrative decision to release the funds to the Yuroks, and none to
the Hoopas, as part of the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act. Marshall said
that until he read the letter in the office of the Special Trustee for
American Indians Ross Swimmer, he believed the department's long-held
position was unchanged.
The complicated and controversial act that split the Hoopa Reservation
into two and reserved millions in timber revenues from the reservation
has been litigated by the Yurok Tribe. More than a decade ago, the Hoopa
Tribe accepted $34 million to resolve its dispute.
The Interior Department changed its stance that the Yuroks had forfeited
its right to the fund because of the suit. But Swimmer's letter says
that the Yuroks can now agree to waive its claims against the government
and access the fund. They must submit the waiver within a month.
Marshall said that the Hoopa Tribe is going to consider its legal
options within the month, and pointed out that as of yet, no money has
actually been dispersed.

"Nobody's won or lost anything yet," Marshall said.
On Thursday, Yurok Tribal Chairwoman Maria Tripp said in a statement
that the federal decision should allow the two tribes to settle their
differences and work together.
But Marshall said it is too early for the Yurok Tribe to be celebrating.
"I appreciate Chairwoman Tripp's words of reconciliation, but this
decision reopens rather than heals old wounds," Marshall said.

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Yuroks to receive disputed $90 million fund
John Driscoll/The Times-Standard

Interior Department goes against Hoopa arguments over settlement act
A massive fund in dispute for two decades will likely be released
entirely to the Yurok Tribe, possibly ending the Hoopa Valley Tribe's
hope that the $90 million might be split.

The U.S. Interior Department on Thursday decided that the money it held
in trust under the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act belongs with the Yuroks.
The money comes from timber sales on the Hoopa Reservation, which was
split in 1988.

The Yuroks have long held that it should be compensated because its
share of the reservation, a narrow swath of mostly privately owned land
on either side of the Klamath River below Weitchpec, doesn't give them
access to rich timber like that on the Hoopa Reservation.

"With this issue finally resolved, Yurok and Hoopa can put our
differences aside," said Yurok Chairwoman Maria Tripp in a
statement. "I am excited at the opportunity we have to work
together, heal old wounds, and build a prosperous and healthy community
in a spirit of mutual cooperation."

Hoopa Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall was traveling Thursday and was
unable to be reached for comment.
In a letter to the tribes from Ross Swimmer,
Special Trustee for American Indians, the department writes that the
Yurok Tribe can still submit an unconditional waiver of claims against
the government. Once the tribe does that, Swimmer writes, the money will
be released to the tribe.

The decision is a turnaround from the Interior Department's earlier
stance that because the Yurok Tribe sued over the settlement act, it
forfeited its right to the funds. But Interior also held that the Hoopa
Tribe was entitled to no more money than it had already received years
ago -- about $34 million.

In the Thursday letter, Swimmer writes that there is no time limit on
the Yurok Tribe's being able to provide a waiver of its claims, unlike
the argument the Hoopa Tribe made that the settlement act's authority
has expired.

"Fundamentally, nothing in the act states that the Yurok Tribe's
choosing to litigate its takings claim would cause the tribe to forfeit
the benefits under the act," Swimmer wrote.

Tripp said that the Yurok Tribal Council will develop a strategy to use
the money, and that any final plan would be voted on by the tribe's
members.