Turtle Talk

Here is the court’s order denying the United States’ motion to dismiss claims by the Yakama Indian Nation under the Indian Long-Term Leasing Act and other statutes — Yakama v US DCT Order

An excerpt:

The following facts are established, for the purpose of ruling on defendant’s motion, by the record submitted to date. The claim over which the United States Court of Federal Claims’ subject matter jurisdiction is contested alleges the Government’s breach of trust and fiduciary duties in collecting rent owed by a lessee to plaintiff lessors, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (the “Yakama Nation”) and eighteen individual landowners (together with the Yakama Nation “plaintiffs”). The lessee’s debt of unpaid principal arose from 1996 until 2000, during the second quarter of a twenty-year lease approved and administered by the United States Department of the Interior on plaintiffs’ behalf. Implicated by plaintiffs’ complaint are the activities of three entities within the Department of the Interior: the Superintendent of the Yakama Agency (the “Superintendent”) of the BIA; the Northwest Regional Director of the BIA (the “Regional Director”), who oversaw the Superintendent’s activities and received appeals of decisions by the BIA; and the Interior Board of Indian Appeals (the “IBIA”), which reviewed appeals of decisions of the Regional Director.