Native American Issues Archive

On the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC, a far-less famous hero died in Montana. She too--against impossible odds--had secured a measure of justice for her people. As her lawyer Keith Harper (Cherokee) said: “With any moment of progressive social change, there is always an iconic figure who will define that movement—the person who refused to get to the back of the bus. For Indian people, for this important cause, for this indelible change, that person was Elouise Cobell.” The cause was holding the federal government accountable for trust land and resource assets it controls and getting back billions of Indian people’s own money.